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Activity Number:
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420
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
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Sponsor:
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Section on Survey Research Methods
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| Abstract - #303743 |
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Title:
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Response Mode and Bias Analysis in the IRS' Individual Taxpayer Burden Survey
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Author(s):
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George Contos*+ and Michael J. Brick and Karen C. Masken and Roy Nord
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Companies:
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IRS and Westat, Inc. and IRS and IRS
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Address:
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1111 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20224,
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Keywords:
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mode ; web ; nonresponse bias
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Abstract:
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The IRS conducted a survey of taxpayers to better understand the pre-filing and filing burden of individual taxpayers. The sampling frame was taxpayers who filed a 2007 income tax return in 2008. The overall response rate was approximately 40% with roughly 45% of the responses via phone, 35% via web, and 20% via mail. In this paper we explore the differences in respondents by response mode, with particular interest in those who responded via the web as the rate for this mode was unexpectedly high. We will also address the non-response bias and explore ways to adjust for this bias when the researcher is interested in a vector of estimates, not just one point estimate. For this study, total burden is actually the sum of seven separate but correlated estimates. Since we are able to link the survey responses back to the tax return, we have an especially rich data set to analyze.
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