It is a generally held principle in survey research that identification of the survey sponsor improves response rates. We know, for example, that government sponsored studies elicit higher response rates, partly because respondents may think they are required to respond or simply because the experience may make them feel patriotic. Surveys sponsored by academic institutions also do well, although not as well as government surveys. Surveys conducted by commercial organizations are the toughest, in part because they raise fears of selling under the guise of a survey, but also because commercial organizations identify their sponsors less frequently. In one notable example, Witt and Bernstein (1992) report achieving response rates as high as 70 percent on disk-by-mail surveys of MIS managers when sponsorship by a high profile client (Intel) was disclosed. MSI’s customer sat surveys, which almost always identify the survey sponsor, routinely achieve higher response rates than other surveys. We should not lose sight of the fact that disclosure of the survey sponsor can add import to the survey and thereby improve the response rate.
We know less about the potential impact of sponsor identification on response bias. In telephone studies respondents will sometimes view the interviewer as an extension of the sponsor and respond more positively. A recent study by Steiger, Keil, and Gaertner (2005) found a tendency for telephone respondents to answer more positively than Web respondents when questions asked the respondent to compare the sponsoring company to competitors. But in general the potential response bias associated with identifying a survey’s sponsor is probably not so great as to forgo the potential positive impact on respondent cooperation when identifying the survey’s sponsor.