Respondent Fatigue Among Middle-School Respondents to State-Based Youth Tobacco Surveys

• Activity Number: 269
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 10, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Robert Gerzoff* and James Tsai and Anna Teplinskya
• Companies: CDC and CDC and DB Consulting
• Keywords: survey ; non-response ; tobacco ; health policy ; hierarchical models

Abstract

Youth Tobacco Surveys (YTS) are school based surveys on student tobacco use, knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Office on Smoking and Health supports schools that conduct a YTS. While adult respondent fatigue is well-established, it is less studied in youth and unassessed for state YTS's.

Respondent fatigue was defined as the tendency to fail to respond to survey questions later in the YTS questionnaire. Using 9 states' 2013-2014 surveys, we calculated breakoff, and item non-response rates for 16,448 participants and 81 YTS questions stratifying by age, sex, race, and state. We used hierarchical models to determine these covariates' impact on respondent fatigue.

Item non-response rates ranged from an average 0.2% for the first question to 8.4% for the last and nonresponse for the last question varied greatly between states (3.1% to 16.1%). Demographic subgroups' non-response patterns were significantly different. Conclusion: Respondent fatigue was apparent. Though overall item-non-response was low, future YTS designs may need to consider strategies to reduce survey fatigue.