Browsing by Subject "mixed-mode survey"

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    Landowner and hunter surveys for white-tailed deer management in Minnesota: factors impacting hunter access to private lands and cell-by-cell correction to reduce mixed-mode survey sampling effects.
    (2016-07) Walberg, Eric
    Surveys of hunters and landowners are an important source of information for wildlife managers in Minnesota. Two separate studies were conducted to examine the topics addressed by this thesis: 1) the identification of variables that impact landowner’s decisions to allow public hunting access in southeast Minnesota, and 2) the capability of cell-by-cell correction to reduce mixed-mode sampling effects. The first study was a survey of southeast Minnesota landowners conducted in 2013 to examine variables that influence landowners’ decision to allow hunting access to the public. Landowners who own large properties present the greatest potential for improving future public access due to the number of hunters that can be accommodated without crowding and because they are more likely to allow hunting access. The second study was a survey of 2015 Minnesota deer hunters using a sequential mixed-mode design with Internet and mail surveys. Mixed-mode designs are increasingly used in efforts to produce more representative results of the population than single survey mode designs, but such designs can introduce the potential for measurement error from mode effects. A cell-by-cell correction can be applied to survey results to adjust for nonresponse error. Applying a cell-by-cell correction caused Internet survey mode results to be significantly different from the combined mixed-mode results and also inflated variance values. There were significant demographic differences between modes for age and residence, and between mailing waves for age. Our results also showed that the fourth mailing wave using a mail survey produced a low response rate and contributed little to the results.