Incentive Experimentation

ATTACHMENT 6
Incentive Experimentation
Proposed Test of Incentive Use in the
National Health Interview Survey
Purpose
To test the use of incentives to improve response rates to the National Health Interview
Survey (NHIS).
Rationale/Policy Question
The National Health Interview Survey is considered the gold standard of health surveys.
It provides benchmarks and is the sampling frame for other federal surveys. Estimates
from the NHIS address many of the Department’s initiatives. Response rates on the
NHIS, as with other surveys, have been gradually declining. Much effort has gone into
increasing the salience of the survey to the public and these efforts will continue. Prepaid
incentives are known to improve completion rates1 but have never been used by NHIS as
they have in other major federal surveys. This project would test the use of incentives on
the NHIS to determine whether the erosion of response rates can be slowed or reversed
and whether there is any consequent improvement is data quality.
Approach
This plan will address overall survey participation rates using different levels of prepaid
financial incentives. A Census Regional Office (RO) with lower response rates than the
average of all six ROs Q2 of 2013 will be used. In two quarters of 2014, about 6,000
households will be divided into three groups with random assignment: $0, $10, or $20
will be mailed with the advance letter to the household.
The evaluation of the project will include not only response rates but also the level of
effort required to complete the interview, the rate of item nonresponse (focusing
especially on difficult items like income and permission to link records using the last 4
digits of the Social Security Number), complete versus partial interview rates, and other
qualitative factors.
Note: Funding is being sought to conduct this study.

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1
Singer, Eleanor and Ye, Cong. (2013) The Use and Effects of Incentives in Surveys. The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2013 645: 112.

http://ann.sagepub.com/content/645/1/112 accessed 11/20/13