Effects of Personal Salutations in E-mail Invitations to Participate in a Web Survey

Effects of personalizing survey invitations on response rateshave been extensively researched in the realm of mail surveys.Commonly, it is found that response rates increase when personalizationis applied. Recently, efforts have been made to investigatewhether these findings extend to the field of Web surveys thatuse e-mail invitations. Using data from a Web experiment conductedamong first-year university students, personalization of e-mailinvitations is shown to have significantly increased the responserate by 7.8 percentage points. From the theory that personalizationdecreases the level of anonymity and perceived privacy, differencesin responses to sensitive questions were expected. However,no effects of personalization on the responses to a questionprobing for respondents’ sexual behavior were found.