The Active Lives survey seeks to survey up to two adults (aged 16+) in every household. This makes it difficult to calculate an individual response rate as the number of adults in non-participating households is unknown.
Therefore, it is more sensible to calculate the proportion of sampled addresses that have responded and additionally calculate the number of respondents per responding address. This method has been utilised previously in similar studies.
To calculate the response rate, it is also important to be able to estimate the proportion of sampled households that are eligible to respond. This is estimated at 92% (derived from face-to-face PAF surveys and used by TNS BMRB for the Active People Survey online pilots and the Community Life online survey).
Therefore, the calculation for response rates in the Active Lives survey is as follows:
- Response Rate = Addresses where at least one response is received / (Total addresses sampled * 0.92)
With the calculation for the respondents per responding households as follows:
- Respondents per responding address = Total number of respondents / numbers of responding addresses
It should be noted that in most cases the address corresponds to the household. However, there are a small number of cases where there are multiple households at the address to which the invitation letter is sent.