Using a Short Follow-up Survey to Compare Respondents and Nonrespondents

• Activity Number: 109
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 12, 2002 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods*
• Author(s): Timothy Triplett*+ and Adam Safir and Simon Pratt and Kevin Wang
• Affiliation(s): Urban Institute and Urban Institute and Urban Institute and Urban Institute
• Keywords: Nonresponse bias ; telephone refusals ; data quality

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the potential for nonresponse bias in the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), a survey of the well-being of children, adults under the age of 65, and their families. The NSAF is primarily a random digit dial (RDD) telephone survey, consisting of a short screener interview to determine household eligibility and a longer extended interview during which survey items of interest are gathered for sampled household members. In order to examine the potential for nonresponse bias, a follow-up survey of a sample of respondents and refusals from the NSAF screener interview was conducted by a different survey organization than the one which conducted the main survey. The follow-up survey contained key items from the main survey, which were used to examine differences between respondents and nonrespondents on these measures. In addition, the follow-up survey also contained questions on subjects thought to be correlated with willingness to participate in a survey, such as attitudes towards surveys and government and perceptions of being busy.