Waterfowl Hunter Survey Closes Tonight

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What are you doing differently with the postcards that you aren't doing differently with the mail out surveys. They use the same postal service but a huge difference. I'm thinking people believe it's junk mail.

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The postcards request the recipient go to a controlled website and do the survey, where the mail-out surveys are the actual hard-copy survey with a pre-paid return envelope. Post-cards get 2 follow-ups; Mail-out surveys get 2 reminder post-cards and a second survey.

With a less than 20% response rate, even with reminder post-cards and a second survey, the big majority of mail-out surveys end up in the trash as well.

Using the exact same methods, surveys in MO, MN, IL, and IA get response rates at or higher than 50%.

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When will the dates come out?

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Teal season dates will be set on July 2, Regular season dates on August 6.

I received the email invitation. I skipped over it at first because the sender was shown as:

Srinivas Thouta [noreply@qemailserver.com]

Not a sender name that I recognized.

The subject did show as Louisiana waterfowl hunters survey but that did not catch my attention at first glance.

I did eventually click the link but maybe the emails could be framed a little better for an increased response rate.

We are lazy down here or just don't care; sad.

Larry:

when was it sent and what was the subject so I can search my emails?

The emails went out in late April or early May. There were at least 2 follow-up emails, so you would have had to ignore 3 of them.

But you may not have received them. Of the 95,000 known duck hunters, we only had email addresses for 25,000.

The vast majority of duckhunter a did NOT receive a survey. That would be a HUGE waste of resources. 2,500 were selected to receive mail-out surveys, 2,500 were selected to receive post-cards asking them to take the survey at a particular website, and about 25,000 got e-mails asking them to take the survey at another website. The other 65,000 got no survey.

That's why we set up the open-web survey which was hosted on the front page of the LDWF website. Although we know the open-web survey is biased toward more dedicated hunters, it provides the opportunity for all interested hunters to participate at a very low cost.

Low response rates in Louisiana have been known for quite awhile. During the 2005 National Duch Hunter Survey, our response rate was about half the other states. That is one reason we are working to find alternative methods that will give us a more random, less-biased same than open web surveys without the cost of all our mail-out surveys being trashed.

The random mail-outs are still the most scientifically valid method, and with a sample size over 400, we will do OK with this one too. We've published some papers comparing the random mail and open web results, and the e-mail survey results will add nicely to that.

Saw the report on sportsman and took the survey I appreciate WLF taking our opinions into consideration. Or at least it makes me feel like they do