Steven Pedlow
Senior Survey Statistician, NORC at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Steven Pedlow (M.S. in Statistics from the University of Chicago) is a Senior Statistician for NORC at the University of Chicago. He is NORC's imputation expert, specializing in hot-deck imputation and multiple imputation methods, but also has expertise in sample design, weighting, and variance estimation, especially for large face-to-face area probability surveys.
120 – Improving Efficiency and Maintaining High Data Quality: Plans and Early Outcomes for the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances
Elusive Respondents: Target Interventions for Challenging Geographic 'Hot-spots'
Catherine C. Haggerty
NORC
Kate Bachtell
NORC
Becki Curtis
NORC
Karen Veldman
NORC
Sjoblom Micah
NORC
Katie Archambeau
NORC
Shannon Nelson
NORC
Steven Pedlow
Senior Survey Statistician, NORC at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Ella Kemp
NORC
Every three years the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is conducted to collect personal income and family finance data from a national area probability and list sample with a lengthy and complex survey instrument. The survey faces challenges in gaining cooperation from households due to the sensitive nature of the study. Since 2004 the field period had to be extended to reach both the targeted response rate and targeted number of completed cases. For the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (2016 SCF), and most surveys seeking high response rates, the pursuit of elusive respondents is necessary and both a lengthy and labor intensive process. To target special efforts designed to shorten start to finish time and reduce total labor associated with these respondents we have identified specific places from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances with both a higher than average incidence of number of contacts and longer than average time in-between the first and last contact. We will describe the places with a high percentage of hard-to-contact cases, and the characteristics of these cases, to identify ways in which we might reduce the level of effort and improve the outcomes of these more difficult cases.