Identifying Causal Mechanisms Underlying Nonignorable Unit Through Refusals to Surveys
Investigators: Robert M. Groves, Mick P. Couper, Eleanor Singer
This project is a set of randomized experiments aimed at systematically both producing and eliminating unit nonresponse error in survey estimates. Specifically, three attributes of the survey request (topic interest, survey sponsor, and monetary incentives) will be experimentally manipulated in concert with choice of target population. Sampling frames containing persons with known characteristics (e.g., occupational groups, interest groups, groups of consumers of specific products or services) will be used. Randomly identified subsamples of these groups will be asked to participate in self-administered surveys on topics of relevance to the frame and topics irrelevant to the frame. Crossed with this factor, the sponsorship of the survey will be experimentally varied, with one sponsor relevant to the frame and one irrelevant to the frame. Finally, the use of a monetary incentive will be crossed with both of the other factors to measure the effects of extrinsic benefits of participation. The key hypothesis is that topic interest and sponsorship act to produce nonignorable nonresponse when the surveys contain items relevant to the frame, and that monetary incentives act to reduce the magnitude of nonresponse error by bringing into the respondent pool sample persons with low topic interest and minimal affect toward the sponsor. The effects of sponsor affect and topic interest are expected to be additive; monetary incentives are expected to counteract the nonignorability influences of both factors. The practical importance of this work to statistics based on surveys is: a) to help agencies conducting surveys anticipate when different sponsors may obtain different results; b) to provide evidence about potentially harmful effects on nonresponse error of interviewers' emphasizing single purposes of a survey; c) to produce evidence regarding the ameliorating effects on nonresponse error of monetary incentives; and d) to test a conceptual structure that will help survey sponsors anticipate when nonresponse rates will affect error and when they will not. This research is supported by the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program and a consortium of federal statistical agencies under the Research on Survey and Statistical Methodology Funding Opportunity.
| Funding: | National Science Foundation |
Funding Period: 10/01/2002 to 09/30/2007
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