What is the term for the proportion of responses obtained from a sample?

• A. Response bias
• B. Sample size
• C. Response rate
• D. Validity

Answer: (C)

The term measures how many of the people invited actually responded to the study, as a fraction of the total invited. This is the response rate. It tells you how effective your data collection was and how much non-response bias might affect your findings. It’s different from sample size, which is just how many people were included in the sample, not how many you heard back from. Validity is about whether the study measures what it’s supposed to measure, not about how many responses you received. Response bias is a related issue where those who respond differ systematically from those who don’t, but the rate itself is just the proportion who replied. For example, if you sent 100 questionnaires and 60 were returned, the response rate is 60%.