Effects of a Web–Mail Mode on Response Rates and Responses to a Care Experience Survey: Results of a Randomized Experiment.

This article focuses on a randomized national experiment testing the feasibility and effectiveness of a sequential web–mail mode for administering the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) Hospice Survey, which collects bereaved family caregivers’ evaluations of hospice care. Among 15,515 caregivers sampled from 56 U.S. hospices, the web–mail mode—initial email invitation to a web survey followed by mail follow-up—yielded significantly higher response rates (39.7%) than mail-only (35.1%) and telephone-only (31.5%) modes, particularly among caregivers with available email addresses (49.6% vs. 36.7%). Respondents to web–mail and mail-only modes reported similar care experiences across most survey items, and patient/caregiver characteristics of respondents did not differ meaningfully between these modes. The study suggests that web–mail mixed-mode administration is a feasible, potentially cost-saving approach that may improve response rates and representation in hospice care experience surveys and could be applicable to other sensitive survey topics and populations preferring asynchronous response modes.