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Which protocol?

A new article by Peytchev, Baxter, and Carley-Baxter outlines reasoning for altering the survey protocol in midstream in order to bring in new types of respondents, as opposed to applying the same protocol and bringing in more of the same. Responsive design (Groves and Heeringa, 2006) is built around a similar reasoning.

I think it's probably not uncommon for survey organizations to use the same protocol over and over. It shouldn't be surprising that this approach generally brings in "more of the same." But if the response rate is the guiding metric, then such considerations aren't relevant. Under the response rate, it's not who you interview, but how many interviews you get. In other words, the composition of the respondent pool is irrelevant as long as you hit your response rate target.

As the authors note, however, there is much more to be done in terms of determining the appropriate protocol for each particular situation -- assuming that simply maximizing response rate is not the goal.
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