Publication type
Survey Futures Working Paper Series
Series Number
23
Series
Survey Futures Working Paper Series
Authors
Publication date
July 18, 2026
Summary:
Invitations to participate in a self-completion survey are often mailed to a sample of individuals. The mailings might include a unique access code or link to an online questionnaire or a paper questionnaire (or both). When completed questionnaires are received, it is typically assumed that they have been completed by the correct person, but this may not always be the case. Once the mailing has been opened, the survey organisation has little control over who within the household completes the questionnaire. We assess how frequently the ‘wrong’ person completes a questionnaire and in what circumstances. We use data from national self-completion surveys in nine European countries, across two major international survey programmes (European Social Survey and Generations and Gender Programme), in which an informative sampling frame provides demographic information about the intended respondents. We compare the frame data with survey responses and conclude that the intended respondent completes the questionnaire in almost all cases. For one of the two survey programmes, we are additionally able to compare results to a face-to-face version of the survey in the same countries and thereby ascertain whether the ‘wrong’ person completes the survey more or less often when it is administered by self-completion compared to interviewer-administered completion.
Subjects
Paper download#589117