Using Soft Refusal Status in the Cell Phone Sample Nonresponse Adjustment

• Activity Number: 88
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, July 29, 2012 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Wei Zeng*+ and David Yankey and N. Ganesh and Philip J. Smith
• Companies: NORC and National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and NORC and National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
• Keywords: refusal status ; nonresponse adjustment ; cell-phone sample ; weighting

Abstract

This paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of using metropolitan statistical area (MSA) geographic status as an adjustment variable in the cell-phone sample nonresponse adjustment for the National Immunization Survey (NIS) and investigates the potential to utilize the level-of-effort information collected during the telephone interview to improve the cell-phone sample nonresponse adjustment. We examined the viability of using two alternative measures of interviewing level of effort for cell-phone nonresponse adjustment: the number of call attempts to resolve a cell-phone number and soft refusal status which is an indicator of initial reluctance by the respondent to participate in the survey. The current approach of using MSA status in the NIS cell-phone sample nonresponse adjustment is compared to nonresponse adjustment utilizing the two alternative level-of-effort variables. We failed to find sufficient evidence to justify using the two new approaches or the current approach for the cell-phone nonresponse adjustment in the NIS. Consequently, eliminating the current MSA status cell-phone sample nonresponse adjustment is under consideration as we develop the future NIS weighting methodology.