The data collection for our project heavily revolved around our ability to effectively reach out to the applicants of the TA grant program for their feedback. We learned some important lessons about how to most effectively initiate contact with and get information from the applicants. Almost all of the applicants were either employees or volunteers for their town governments. As with many occupations they are often inundated with emails. This means timing and reminders were vital for our work of getting survey and interview responses from them. We sent out our initial survey request emails to applicants on a Friday morning. We got numerous completed survey responses and even more notifications of surveys having been started through Qualtrics. Responses tapered off after the first few hours. Presumably this is because the emails proceeded to get buried in their inboxes. Therefore we sent our two further reminder emails staggered a few days apart. Following each reminder we received a few more responses.
Setting up phone interviews followed a similar trend with respondents primarily replying shortly after a setup email was sent or not at all. To supplement our data with further interviews, we had begun to cold call applicants who had not already confirmed phone interview appointments, including those who didn't respond to the survey. Our early attempts at calling between 12pm and 1pm were unsuccessful as most respondents were away from their phones, presumably at lunch. We had slightly better success when we tried calling them again between the hours of 1pm to 3pm.
In conclusion we found that emailing applicants first thing in the morning means that they see our emails first when they get into work. We also found that trying to contact anyone during their lunch hour is a doomed proposition.
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