Assessing Nonresponse Bias and the Efficacy of Weighting Class Adjustments in a Survey of Adult Educational Attainment with a Nonresponse Follow-Up Sample

• Activity Number: 250
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 10, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Michael Jackson*
• Companies: American Institutes for Research
• Keywords: household survey ; nonresponse bias ; weighting class adjustment ; address-based sampling

Abstract

The National Adult Education and Training Survey (NATES) was a 2013 pilot study sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics to evaluate whether high-quality data on adult education, training, and credentials for work could be collected using a mailed household survey. A unique aspect of the NATES pilot was its nonresponse follow-up study, in which a random subsample of nonrespondents to the mailed survey was selected for in-person interviews using a shortened questionnaire. This paper uses data from the nonresponse follow-up interviews to estimate the extent of unit nonresponse bias in key NATES estimates. Base-weighted estimates are compared to nonresponse-adjusted estimates in order to assess the efficacy of standard weighting class adjustments at mitigating the observed bias, using a set of commercially purchased household-level auxiliary variables appended to the NATES sampling frame. Associations between the auxiliary data and key NATES outcomes are observed in order to further assess the potential utility of commercial auxiliary data at correcting for nonresponse in future administrations.