The effects of appointment delay and reminders on appointment-keeping behavior.
Item
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Title
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The effects of appointment delay and reminders on appointment-keeping behavior.
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Identifier
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AAI3288746
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identifier
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3288746
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Creator
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Watanabe-Rose, Mari.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Peter Sturmey
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Behavioral | Sociology, Public and Social Welfare | Health Sciences, Public Health
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Abstract
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For meetings and programs that require participants to make appointments, it is important to maximize the number of appointments kept. The present study investigated the effects of appointment delay and phone reminders on college students' appointment-keeping behavior. Experiments 1 and 2 took place in different semesters, in which 38 and 68 students, respectively, made appointments. A significantly higher percentage of students kept their appointments in the 1-day appointment delay condition than in the 15-day delay condition with no reminders in both experiments (p = .034 in Experiment 1; p < .001 in Experiment 2). Phone reminders provided 1 day prior to the appointment dates increased the percentage of appointments kept in the 15-day delay condition in Experiment 2 ( p = .002). In Experiment 3, a total of 97 students made appointments. The percentage of appointments kept was higher in the 1-day delay condition than in the 8-, 15-, and 29-day delay conditions with no reminders ( p = .008). There was no significant difference among the latter three conditions (p = .919). Phone reminders effectively increased appointment-keeping in the 8-, 15-, and 29-day delay conditions ( p = .014). In addition, no statistical significance was detected between the 1-day with no reminders condition and the 8-, 15-, and 29-day delay conditions with reminders (p = .336). A conceptual model to depict the effects of appointment delay and reminders is presented, which indicates that the value of appointment, or the probability of appointment-keeping behavior, decreases as the amount of appointment delay increases. To investigate the shape of the function of appointment delay further, another parametric study with appointment delay of 1-8 days is recommended. The effect of the time interval between reminders and appointment dates may also be studied in the future.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
