Professional Documents
Culture Documents
doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00040.x
Background
Students are often used in research as research subjects or to validate/pilot ques-
tionnaires. It is known that response rates to requests to participate in research
projects vary as a function of a number of factors such as: a letter sent to forewarn
that the request is to be made (Brunner & Carroll, 1969), incentives such as money
(Singer, Van Hoewyk, Gebler, Raghunathan, & McGonagle, 1999), the questionnaire
length, design and the number of difficult questions (Dillman, Sinclair, & Clark,
1993), how interesting the topic is to the respondent (Groves, Singer, & Corning,
2000), and the use of follow up methods (Roscoe, Lang, & Sheth, 1975). Persuasive-
ness has been found to be dependent on a large number of factors including the
vividness of the message (Frey & Eagly, 1993), the attractiveness of the speaker
(DeBono & Harnish, 1988) and the mood of the recipient (Raghunathan & Trope,
2002).
This research brief examines the effect of the communication medium on
response rate by comparing an oral request for participation with an email request.
Numerous studies have compared one communication channel with another (e.g.,
Lana, 1963; McGinnies, 1965). However, there is little point in comparing two
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2006) 877–883 ª 2006 International Communication Association 877
channels without considering how appropriate they are to communicators, in this
case faculty members, to meet their specific goals (Rosnow & Robinson, 1967). The
choice of email and oral communication, specifically public oral communication, is
therefore not arbitrary. These are the two easiest and presumably most common
approaches faculty members have to access students to request their participation in
research—by asking students in a lecture or tutorial, or by using a class email list.
(Asking students in a tutorial to participate is a public oral request as opposed to
asking one student after class, which would be private oral.) Both of these techniques
878 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2006) 877–883 ª 2006 International Communication Association
It is difficult to generalize from these findings to the real world communication
of the oral request. It may be expected that an oral request will have a better impact
than an email one as the source is close to the recipients. However, any response to
questions about the request would be immediate (short RL) and might negate this.
Closeness may have an impact because it affects attraction (Pallak, 1983) and like-
ability (Chaiken, 1980). Therefore if the source is likable and attractive, the oral
request may be expected to do better.
Latane (1981) proposes a theory of social impact that specifies the effect one
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2006) 877–883 ª 2006 International Communication Association 879
Method
Two hundred and eighty two final year business school undergraduate students
taking a strategic management module were used as the sample. The author was
not a tutor on this module and did not teach this group of students on any other
module. Each student was requested to participate in a research project. The depen-
dent variable was their response, yes or no. For the purposes of teaching, the class was
split into 18 tutorial groups. All the students in each tutorial group were randomly
Results
The results are analyzed using a chi-squared test for independence with phi used as
a measure of association. The results of testing H1 are shown in Tables 1 and 2.
Table 1 is the cross tabs of comparing the oral request with the email request. The
results reveal a significant difference between the two media, with the oral request
880 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2006) 877–883 ª 2006 International Communication Association
Table 1 Comparing oral and email request
Response No (percentage) Yes (percentage) Total
Email request Count 147(87) 22(13) 169
Expected Count 140.83 28.167 169
Oral request Count 88(78) 25(22) 113
Expected Count 94.167 18.83 113
Total Count 235 47 282
Expected Count 235 47 282
out-performing the email request. However, the email to group condition achieved
a very low response rate (less than 1%) and this alone may be contributing to the
significance of the relationship. To test this, the analysis was repeated comparing the
oral request with just the email to individuals request. The results are shown in
Table 2. This time, no significant difference was found.
The results of testing H2 are shown in Table 3. The email condition is examined
to determine the impact of emails sent to individuals versus one sent to a group. The
results show emails to individuals are much more successful at eliciting a positive
response than an email to a group.
Table 4 shows the testing of H3, examining the oral request. The results do not show
a statistically significant difference between the responses of people who were given
a blank sheet to sign and those who were given a sheet already full of names to sign.
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Table 4 Examining oral conditions
No (percentage) Yes (percentage) Total
Oral request with blank Count 57(84) 11(16) 68
name sheet Expected Count 53.0 15.0 68
Oral request with full Count 31(69) 14(31) 45
name sheet Expected Count 35.0 10.0 45
Total Count 88 25 113
Expected Count 88 25 113
Conclusions
Support was found for H1 and H2 but not H3. There is a significant difference between
the email and oral request, but only because of the poor performance of the email to
the group. Emails to individuals are significantly better at eliciting a positive response
than one email to a group. There is no statistically significant difference between oral
requests when potential respondents perceive a large number of people have already
agreed to take part and when they do not. However, as seen in Table 4, the number of
yes responses for the full name sheet were much higher than expected and the per-
centage of yes responses for the full name sheet is nearly twice that for the blank name
sheet. Therefore, research to examine this result further would be useful. Overall, the
findings show that to achieve the highest response, researchers should avoid asking
students to participate in research by sending one impersonal email to the entire
group. There is no difference in response if the request is made by personalized email,
or orally in tutorials, so this choice may be made based on convenience.
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