Comparing web and mail responses in a mixed mode survey in college alcohol use research.

OBJECTIVE This exploratory study examined potential mode effects (web versus U.S. mail) in a mixed mode design survey of alcohol use at eight U.S. colleges. METHODS Randomly selected students from eight U.S. colleges were invited to participate in a self-administered survey on their alcohol use in the spring of 2002. Data were collected initially by web survey (n=2619) and non-responders to this mode were mailed a hardcopy survey (n=628). RESULTS College students who were male, living on-campus and under 21 years of age were significantly more likely to complete the initial web survey. Multivariate analyses revealed few substantive differences between survey modality and alcohol use measures. CONCLUSIONS The findings from this study provide preliminary evidence that web and mail surveys produce comparable estimates of alcohol use in a non-randomized mixed mode design. The results suggest that mixed mode survey designs could be effective at reaching certain college sub-populations and improving overall response rate while maintaining valid measurement of alcohol use. Web surveys are gaining popularity in survey research and more work is needed to examine whether these results can extend to web surveys generally or are specific to mixed mode designs.