Today my wife and I got a letter from the Pew Research center with a with a $2 bill enclosed. The survey has a link to the website: http://pewresearchstudy.com with a password, asking the youngest female in the household to take a survey. I'm a little speculative on the legitimacy of this survey and why they would give out free money in the mail.
Has anyone encountered these types of letters before? Is this a scam or a legitimate survey with real money being sent to us?
It's probably legitimate.
a letter of introduction inviting recipients (and specifically, the adult in the household with the next upcoming birthday) to take the online survey, information about how to take the survey, $2 in cash as a pre-incentive and a promise of a $10 post-incentive for completing the survey.
They send money to guilt you in to responding.
Charities use this tactic too but usually with less incentive, a penny, nickle or quarter. Pew must really want a response...
Your information is worth something to them. They're giving you part of that value in order to get the information. This is right, good, fair and not a scam.
A complement to @Ron John answer.
It is legit As according to this third party article : Did you get $2 in the mail from Pew Research Center? Heres the deal.
It is not an expensive practice, indeed, the postage alone already cost $0.50 and the printout and cash enclose process cost more than $0.30. So the $2 is just a fraction of the survey cost. Here is a research paper talking about pre-paid cash as an attraction for survey responses.
In addition, whether you like it or not, a non-reply will give another set of demography for the neighbourhood (thus the reply or no-reply is already a survey).
Nevertheless, an extremely high non-reply will also mean : i. The neighbourhood are free loader, ii. not many people stay in the neighbourhood iii. something wrong within the mailing process (It is instant cash by intercepting all such mail)
