Using Incentives to Increase Student Response Rates

People Respond to Incentives

“Do it for the Good of Future Students”

And, College Students’ Frontal Lobes

So, Can We Provide Incentives,

and will it change behavior?

What Happened? Question 1 (Cross Sectional Analysis):

Did instructors who used incentives have higher student response rates

than instructors who did not?

• Mean rate without incentives: 47.3% of students completed part or all of

on-line ClassEval

• Mean rate with incentives: 79.6% of students completed part or all of on-

line ClassEval

• This difference was significant by both

- t-test: t (df = 44) = 7.54, p < .0001 (percentages require arcsin

transform)

- Non-parametric test (Krukall-Wallis) p< .0001

• So, instructors that used class-based incentives had dramatically higher

student participation in ClassEval

-- But maybe those instructors would have had higher participation

rates anyway

What Happened? Question 2 (LongitudinalAnalysis):

Did instructors who used incentives in Spring ‘10 have higher

evaluations than for same course in Spring ‘09 (when no one used

incentives)?

(Note: Not all instructors taught the same course in both ‘09 and ‘10)

• So, even the same instructors had higher student participation when

they used class-based incentives

% response in

Spring ‘09

% response in

Spring ‘10

No incentives in

Spring ‘10

49.4% 46.6%

Used incentives

in Spring ‘10

59.0% 77.6%

What Happened? Question 3 (one more interesting question):

Do evaluations scores correlate with the response rates?

• Here is the scary part – without incentives the fewer the students who participate, the lower the mean ratings of the class

• But, if you use incentives, the number of students participating has no relationship with mean ratings of class

• Why?

Did not use

Incentives

Used Incentives

Q. 9 (Instructor) .39 -.01

Q. 14 (Course) .49 .00

Why?

All Students

Did ClassEval

Dissatisfied

Students

Conclusion