Treatment of Outcome-Related Nonresponse in an International Literacy Survey

• Activity Number: 695
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 8, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Wendy Van de Kerckhove*+ and Leyla Mohadjer and Tom Krenzke
• Companies: WESTAT and Westat and Westat
• Keywords: Non-ignorable ; missing not at random (MNAR) ; bias ; PIAAC

Abstract

This paper describes efforts to address nonignorable nonresponse in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of adult literacy. A source of nonignorable nonresponse in PIAAC is from persons who cannot complete the survey because of a language barrier, reading/writing barrier, or learning/mental disability. Such persons are part of the target population. However, they cannot be represented by respondents because their reason for not completing the survey is directly related to the survey outcome (proficiency in the assessment language). We report on data collection, weighting, and estimation procedures implemented in PIAAC to limit this source of bias and allow for comparability between countries.