In the second approach, persons who respond only after considerable effort from the survey administrators – late respondents – are compared with early respondents. Differences in prevalence between early and late respondents

serve as the basis for inferences about non-respondents, on the assumption that non-respondents lie beyond the late respondents on the continuum of resistance. The method requires accurate documentation of efforts to elicit, and the timing of, the survey response. In one such study, a web-based learn more survey of alcohol use at a New Zealand university, with 82% response (Kypri et al., 2004a), utilising several evidence-based methods (Edwards et al., 2002), late respondents drank more, had a higher prevalence of heavy drinking, and more alcohol-related problems RAD001 supplier than early respondents (Kypri et al., 2004b). On the basis of these studies,

we hypothesised that people who do not comply with health guidelines on drinking, smoking, diet and physical activity, and have greater body mass, would be less inclined to participate in a health behaviour survey. New Zealand has eight universities and 19 polytechnic colleges which provide vocational training and some degree courses. All eight universities were invited to participate in a web-based study, and five accepted, representing six campuses (one of them providing data from two campuses in different cities). Ten of the polytechnic colleges were invited to participate in order to maximise geographic coverage of the country for a study aimed at examining environmental determinants of various health behaviours (i.e., polytechnics in the same cities as universities were not invited). Six of the invited polytechnics accepted, bringing the total number of tertiary education institutions involved in the study to 12. Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) comprise 15% of the New Zealand population, 10% found of university students and 18% of polytechnic students (Ministry of Education, 2011). We sought to invite random samples of 430 Māori and

430 non-Māori students aged 17–25 years from each campus in order to maximise the explanatory power of the study for Māori, who have traditionally been poorly served by population surveys despite bearing a considerably greater disease burden (Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, 2002). There was no stratification of the samples by age and sex. All members of the study population had an institution assigned e-mail address which we used to issue the invitation to participate. The questionnaire was offered in Māori and English and users could switch between languages at any stage by clicking a button. Students were invited by personalised letter to complete a web survey of their alcohol use, using a procedure described in detail elsewhere (Kypri et al., 2004a and Kypri et al., 2009). Sample weighting was used to account for the proportions of Māori and non-Māori at each campus.