Postcard Newsletter Evaluation

This article describes how postcards were used to conduct a simple and inexpensive evaluation of a newsletter.

"Using a simple and inexpensive but carefully designed postcard survey, we evaluated The Woodlander, a one-page, monthly newsletter written for private nonindustrial forestland owners in three northwestern Pennsylvania counties. 

In late Spring 1990, a postcard survey was sent to a random sample of 10% of the 1,500 recipients of the newsletter in the envelope containing the newsletter for that month. A short article in the newsletter alerted readers to the survey and the possibility a postcard might be included with their newsletter. Four questions were printed on the message side of pre-addressed, postage-paid postcards.

Sixty-eight percent of the postcards (n=104) were returned. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the results based on such a sample will differ by no more than one percentage point in either direction from what would have been obtained by surveying all readers." (Smith & Kiernan, 1992)

Sources

Smith, S. S., & Kiernan, N. (1992). Postcard newsletter evaluation. 30(4), Retrieved from http://www.joe.org/joe/1992winter/iw2.php

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