Jessica M. E. Herzing

Even though the proportion of individuals who are not equipped to participate in online surveys is constantly decreasing, many surveys face an under-representation of individuals who do not feel IT literate enough to participate. Using experimental data from a probability-based online panel, we study which recruitment survey mode strategy performs best in recruiting less IT-literate persons for an online panel. The sampled individuals received postal invitations to conduct the recruitment survey in a self-completion mode. We experimentally vary four recruitment survey mode strategies: one online mode strategy, two sequential mixed-mode strategies, and one concurrent mode strategy. We find the recruitment survey mode strategies to have a major effect on the sample composition of the recruitment survey, but the differences between the strategies vanish once respondents are asked to proceed with the panel online.