Recruiting women for a study on perceived risk of cancer: influence of survey topic salience and early versus late response.

Introduction: Understanding the characteristics of early and late survey responders has implications for recruitment efforts and for informing potential response bias. The main objective of this analysis was to examine survey responder status (ie, early vs late response) by sociodemographic characteristics and by salience of study variables among respondents.

Methods: We analyzed data from a survey on family cancer history and perceived cancer risk among women at a large managed health-care organization.