Errata Sheet for

Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys:
The Tailored Design method

Don A. Dillman, Jolene D. Smyth, and Leah Melani Christian

2014

  • Page 38: The word “breeches” should be “breaches in the following sentence: “In addition, increasingly, people may ask whether surveys they have been told are useful really are, and breechesin confidentiality or other improprieties in the use of survey data can easily be publicized, and made known to all who have the patience to do an Internet or media search.”
  • Page 77:We should have cited the more updated text, Lohr (2010), instead of Lohr (1999) in the following sentence, “Many excellent texts focus exclusively on the various types of sampling designs used in survey research and provide far more detail than can be covered here (these include Levy & Lemeshow, 2008; Lohr, 1999; Maxim, 1999).”

Lohr, S. L. (2010). Sampling: Design and analysis 2nd edition Boston, MA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning.

  • Page 78: In the calculations near the bottom of the page, we failed to square the z-score critical value, resulting in n=544 rather than the correct answer of n=1067. The text should read as follows (changes are bolded):

Thus, for a question with a 50/50 split, a completed sample size of 1067cases is needed to be sure that the estimate of interest will be within ±3 percentage points 95% of the time:

n = 1067

To put it another way, one can conclude for a yes/no question in which one expects respondents to be split 50/50 (the most conservative assumption that can be made about variance) that 95 out of 100 times that a random sample of 1067people is selected from the total population of 1,000, the sample estimate will be within 3 percentage points of the true population value.

  • Page 154: In the following sentence, the citation for Israel (2013) should be Israel (2006):

“These types of errors occur because respondents do not expect survey designers to make such illogical changes in the design, not necessarily because they are being lazy respondents (Israel, 2013; Schwarz, 1996).”

Israel, G. D.,(2006, February). Visual cues and response format effects in mail surveys. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Southern Rural Sociological Association, Orlando, FL.

  • Page 354, Figure 10.1: The third point in this figure should read as follows (the change is bolded):

An optimally sized box (3/16” square) encourages respondents to write Xs within the box instead of check marks.

  • Page 360, Figure 10.5. The error rates in this figure should be as follows:

Classroom
Error Rate / Census
Error Rate
Control form / 21.9 / 26.2
Prevention method / 12.3 / 21.7
Detection method / 11.1 / 17.5

Also, the table notes should read (change bolded):

Source: Adapted from “Improving Navigational Performance in U.S. Census 2000 by Altering the Visual Administered Languages of Branching Instructions,” by C. D. Redline, D. A. Dillman, A. N. Dajaniand M. A. Scaggs, 2003, Journal of OfficialStatistics, 19, 403–419.

  • Page 429, Figure 11.8:The last bar in this figure is incorrect. The corrected graph is shown below.

1