Surveying Current and Former TANF Recipients in Iowa. Draft.

This recent APPAM paper discusses techniques used to obtain a 72 percent response rate on a survey of 3,000 welfare recipients in Iowa (70 percent is considered the standard response rate for a high-quality welfare survey). It also provides lessons for other similar surveys (including TANF leaver studies planned or in progress in more than a dozen states). Based on statistical comparisons, it suggests alternative response rate standards by states, and research organizations conducting these surveys could assess their quality.