Increasing the response rate of the Comparative Candidate Survey.

The main goal of the Comparative Candidate Survey is to collect data about the behavior and attitudes of parliamentary candidates regarding an array of political economic and social issues. This international project aims to study their opinions and characteristics and to illustrate similarities and differences based on their demographic and social characteristics. In Greece, the research has taken place since 2007 by the laboratory of Applied Political Research of the department of Political Science of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.TH). The surveys are mainly conducted online (combination of web surveys with personal interviews - mixed-mode). The rapid development of technology in combination with the increasing use of the Internet in Greece during the last decade, allow us to utilize the latter for research purposes permitting us to conduct political surveys based exclusively on web tools. This paper intends to explore ways that will lead to the improvement of research achieving increase of the response rate of the candidates and making the sample more representative. For this reason an experiment is implemented in order to investigate techniques which could reduce the number of questionnaires that are abandoned before completion, the so-called drop-outs. Therefore, we examine if the duration of the survey constitutes an inhibiting or stimulating factor for completing the questionnaire and for the participation in the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]