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Is there such a thing as "mode"?

Ok. The title is a provocative question. But it's one that I've been thinking about recently. A few years ago, I was working on a lit review for a mixed-mode experiment that we had done. I found that the results were inconsistent on an important aspect of mixed-mode studies -- the sequence of modes.

As I was puzzled about this, I went back and tried to write down more information about the design of each of the experiments that I was reviewing. I started to notice a pattern. Many mixed-mode surveys offered "more" of the first mode. For example, in a web-mail study, there might be 3 mailings with the mail survey and one mailed request for a web survey. This led me to think of "dosage" as an important attribute of mixed-mode surveys.

I'm starting to think there is much more to it than that. The context matters  a lot -- the dosage of the mode, what it may require to complete that mode, the survey population, etc. All of these things matter.

Still, we often talk about "mode," abstracted from these contexts. I'm wondering if this might not be harmful in that we end up comparing things that are different. In other words, if I compare two experimental studies of web/mail vs mail/web, I ought to at least be aware of the ways in which they differ. These differences may be more important than the similarities. SO, that's the context for my question. I'm going to work on being more specific whenever I start talking about survey mode.
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