About the Survey Response Rate
This calculator computes a survey's response rate, the share of eligible people who were contacted and actually completed the survey. It is a basic but essential field-quality metric for anyone running or evaluating a survey.
How It Works
You enter the number of completed responses and the total number of eligible people contacted. The calculator divides completed responses by total contacted and expresses the result as a percentage.
Examples
Mid-sized survey
With 340 completed responses out of 1,200 eligible people contacted, the response rate is 340/1200 x 100 = 28.33%.
Higher-engagement survey
With 610 completed responses out of 800 eligible contacts, the response rate is 610/800 x 100 = 76.25%.
Advantages
- Gives a single, standardized percentage that can be compared across different survey waves or methodologies.
- Simple enough to calculate instantly during fieldwork monitoring, without needing full survey administration software.
- Input guards prevent nonsensical results, such as more completions than people contacted.
Common Mistakes
- Confusing response rate with completion rate; response rate is based on everyone eligible and contacted, while completion rate among those who started the survey can look much higher.
- Treating a low response rate as automatically invalidating the results, when the real concern is whether respondents differ systematically from non-respondents.
- Using total contacts (including ineligible or unreachable numbers) in the denominator instead of only eligible contacts, which understates the true response rate.
Edge Cases to Watch For
- Total contacted must be greater than zero, since the rate requires dividing by that count.
- Completed responses cannot exceed total contacted or be negative; either condition returns an input error.
- The calculation treats every non-completion the same way, whether it was an outright refusal, a partial response, or someone who could never be reached, so it does not break down why the rate is low.
- The 'total contacted' figure only counts eligible contacts, so how eligibility was determined in your fieldwork directly affects the resulting rate.
Common Use Cases
- Survey researchers reporting a standardized response rate alongside their published findings.
- Market research firms and call centers monitoring fieldwork performance in real time.
- Academic and government survey teams documenting response rates as part of methodology disclosures.