WITHDRAWN: Assessing Two Nonresponse Follow-Up Strategies: Shortened Questionnaire and Administrative Data Collection

• Activity Number: 303
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Joseph Sakshaug and Stephanie Eckman and Frauke Kreuter
• Companies: Institute for Employment Research and Institute for Employment Research and University of Maryland
• Keywords: linkage consent ; nonresponse bias ; short questionnaire

Abstract

Nonresponse is a ubiquitous problem in surveys around the world. Not only does nonresponse diminish the resulting sample sizes used for analyses, it can also introduce bias in statistical estimates obtained from the collected data. In practice, very little is known about the nonrespondents and whether they systematically differ from the respondents on key survey variables. In an effort to obtain more information about nonrespondents, we assessed the feasibility of asking nonrespondents to participate in a follow-up study conducted in Germany. In the study, nonrespondents to a telephone survey were randomized to one of two follow-up groups. In the first group, nonrespondents were mailed an abbreviated questionnaire and asked to answer 5 questions from the main survey questionnaire. In the second group, nonrespondents were mailed a consent form asking for consent to access their administrative employment records. We present results from both follow-up strategies to examine characteristics of those who choice to participate in the follow-up study and grant access to their administrative data.