Cooperation

Cooperation is a term used by survey researchers that refers to the degree to which persons selected (sampled) to participate in research accept (agree to) their invitation and engage (cooperate) in the research process. The composition of the group under study is a fundamental (and vitally important) consideration in the design, execution, and interpretation of a survey. A researcher must both identify and collect information from an appropriate sample in order to successfully and validly answer the research question. Ideally, the rate of cooperation among those sampled will be very high.

Applied to a specific study, cooperation refers to the breadth of participation that researchers are able to elicit from those that they have chosen to study. To help objectively measure levels of cooperation within a ...