Reminding students to complete the survey has been shown to increase response rates, but when should these reminders be sent? Over the past several years, PRA and institutions have seen that the majority of responses come within 48 hours of students receiving an email.
CUSC-CCREU is asking institutions to participate in an experiment to support or reject the hypothesis that “shortening the timeline for reminder emails improves survey response rates”. There is no cost to participate in the experiment.
Institutions may opt-in to the experiment. PRA will randomly assign one-half of their sample to the short timeline group and the other half to the long timeline group. PRA will clarify with you which dates the emails will be sent to students in each timeline group.
| Email timeline | Short timeline | Long timeline | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Institution sample | One-half | One-half | No cost for experiment |
| Email invitation sent | Day 1 | Day 1 | Your institution’s survey start date |
| Reminder email #1 sent | Day 4 | Day 8 | |
| Reminder email #2 sent | Day 7 | Day 15 | |
| Reminder email #3 sent | Day 10 | Day 22 | Optional addition for extra cost |
| Reminder email #4 sent | Day 14 | Day 29 | Optional addition for extra cost |
Note: Reminder emails are sent only to non-respondents
CAUTION: Some post-secondary institutions also have a communications plan that advertises the survey to their students, such as on the website, student portal, and/or social media. If your institution is participating in the experiment, you could consider whether to continue the survey communications plan after the invitation email is sent. Please indicate on the Registration if your institution will be running additional promotions during the experiment.
The master data files will contain responses from all students at member universities who completed the survey (see Completed survey) with a field indicating which group the respondent was in for the email timeline experiment (short or long). Institution data files will contain responses from all of their students with a field indicating which group the respondent was in for the email timeline experiment, and a field indicating which respondents were included in the master data file.
Results of the experiment (aggregate comparisons of within-institution response rates and overall response rates) will be reported by PRA in August 2027. If a short email timeline is shown to produce a substantially higher response rate, the CUSC-CCREU Board will recommend this to institutions for future surveys. If the short email timeline has a similar response rate as the long email timeline, this is still good evidence that a short email timeline is acceptable.
While the CUSC‐CCREU Board encourages institutions to opt-in, participation in the experiment is voluntary. Please indicate on the Registration form if your institution is participating. If your institution does not participate in the experiment, all of the students in your sample will receive emails on the following timeline or on dates that you choose in confirmation with PRA.
Standard email timeline (no experiment)
Email invitation sent: Day 1, your institution’s survey start date
Reminder email #1 sent: 5 to 7 days after invitation email
Reminder email #2 sent: 10 to 12 days after invitation email