Question

Exercises 5–8 refer to the study of an association between which ear is used for cell phone calls and whether the subject is left-handed or right-handed. The study is reported in “Hemispheric Dominance and Cell Phone Use,” by Seidman et al., JAMA Otolaryngology— Head & Neck Surgery, Vol. 139, No. 5. The study began with a survey e-mailed to 5000 people belonging to an otology online group, and 717 surveys were returned. (Otology relates to the ear and hearing.)

Response Rate What percentage of the 5000 surveys were returned? Does that response rate appear to be low? In general, what is a problem with a very low response rate?

Short answer

The response rate is 14.34%, which is not too low.

Yes, the response rate is low.

Low response rates have chances of giving biased results.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

The number of people mailed for responses is 5000.

The number of responses received is 717.

Step 2:Response rates

The response rate is the percentage equivalent to the fraction of subjects who respond to the survey among the targeted sample subjects.

In the study, 717 responses were received. Therefore, the response rate is computed as follows.

\(\frac{{717}}{{5000}} \times 100 = 14.34\% \)

Thus, the response rate is 14.34%.

Interpretation of response rate

The response rate is quite low. As the target sample was quite large, the responses are acceptable.

Problem associated with a low response rate

The low response rates have a large scope of creating nonresponse bias. The validity of the data is also affected by the low response rates.

Thus, the very low response rate affects the results.