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Dear Editor,
In survey research, a return rate of 60% is really excellent and certainly enough to discern trends. It doesn't mean that there was a dropout of 40%. Dropout is a very different thing. Some of the graduates declined to participate because of health reasons.
As for the survey being framed positively, while the questions were in the positive, it was a Likert scale which allows for negative responses, plus we had a narrative section which allowed for both positive and negative responses. People who were unhappy with their training experience were represented across all age groups. Yes, the older people tended to report a more happy experience. We are not saying that there are no problems in institutes; this exploratory study was only looking at broad trends. A follow-up study is being currently conducted to see if major trends hold up with a sample of more recent graduates.
Regarding what is an acceptable return rate, here are some examples from the literature:
One early example of a finding was reported by Visser et al. (1996) who showed that surveys with lower response rates (near 20%) yielded more accurate measurements than did surveys with higher response rates (near 60 or 70%). In another study, Keeter et al. (2006) compared results of a 5 day survey employing the Pew Research Center's usual methodology (with a 25% response rate) with results from a more rigorous survey conducted over a much longer field period and achieving a higher response rate of 50%. In 77 out of 84 comparisons, the two surveys yielded results that were statistically indistinguishable.
Nevertheless, in spite of these research studies, a higher response rate is preferable because the missing data is not random. There is no satisfactory statistical solution to deal with missing data that may not be random. Assuming an extreme bias in the responders is one suggested method of dealing with low survey rates. Getting a high response rate (>80%) from a small, random sample is considered pref