The impact of gender, age, and engagement on survey response timing: 10 years of data collection from UK hunters

ABSTRACT

These findings evaluated the effect of age, gender, and hunter engagement on the survey mailing respondents responded to for eight postal surveys sent out between 1997 and 2008. All respondents were members of the British Association for Shooting & Conservation (BASC). Hunters in the UK are not required to be a member of any organization, but BASC has approximately 155,000 members and is the largest hunting organization in the UK. A sample of these members are surveyed about once a year for their opinions on a wide variety of topics ranging from use of hunting dogs to attitudes to lead shot regulations among UK hunters. All surveys conducted between 1997 and 2008 were sent by post with an initial invitation letter, a questionnaire, and a prepaid return envelope. This was followed by two subsequent reminder letters to nonrespondents, again with a covering letter, survey form, and a prepaid return envelope.

KEYWORDS:

• Hunter survey
• bias
• engagement