Pre-Printed Versus Handwritten Post-It Notes’ Impact on Survey Response in Hard to Recruit Survey Recipients: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Veterans with PTSD Disability

Our goal was to see if affixing pre-printed Post-it note messages to a mailed survey would generate response rates similar to when handwritten Post-it notes were used in hard to recruit survey recipients. The study was a nested, randomized controlled trial of 575 individuals from a cohort of 2,100 United States Veterans with PTSD disability. Analysis was intention-to-treat. Survey response rate was 38.5% in the pre-printed Post-it note arm and 44.9% in the handwritten Post-it note arm (p = 0.09). In non-inferiority testing, pre-printed notes’ response rate exceeded the 10% margin of inferiority but was less than the 15% margin when compared to handwritten notes.