Suchergebnisse

The task of survey interviewers includes contacting target persons, gaining their cooperation, & using appropriate interview methods to obtain the most reliable data. However, interviewers are not equally successful in their task. Factors that might differentiate good & mediocre interviewers are examined in this article, focusing on the influence of the interviewers' contact methods on respondents' cooperation rate. Data from the German ALLBUS 2000 General Social Survey are used in multilevel analyses of both contact & cooperation rates to assess both interviewer & target person variables. Results support the hypothesis that interviewer contact methods do influence respondent cooperation, but that respondent variables play an important role in the selection of contact methods. Tables, Appendixes, References. J. Stanton

Explores response quality of children in surveys as related to the cognitive developmental stages of children. The abilities to interpret the question, retrieve information, & synthesize & report that information are assessed as an outcome of question structure & age variables. The study focused on partially labeled response options & vague quantifiers in contrast to completely labeled, clearly worded response options. The effects of cognitive processes, age, & question-&-answer options structure are evaluated. 1 Table, 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 34 References. L. Collins

Household survey nonresponse is a matter of concern in many countries. In one of the first
international trend analyses, de Leeuw and de Heer (2002) found that response rates declined
over the years, and that countries differed in response rates and nonresponse trends. Their
analyses cover longitudinal data on the Labour Force Survey from National Statistical
Institutes for the period 1980 to 1997. We added a new data set, covering the period 1998
-2015, and analysed nonresponse data over time and countries. In these analyses we
differentiated between voluntary and mandatory surveys. The trends visible in de Leeuw and
de Heer (2002) continue with possibly a small deceleration in refusal rates.

With the decrease of landline phones in the last decade, telephone survey methodologists face a new challenge to overcome coverage bias. In this study we investigate coverage error for telephone surveys in Europe over time and compare two situations: classical surveys that rely on landline only with surveys that also include mobile phones. We analyzed Eurobarometer data, which are collected by means of face-to-face interviews and contain information on ownership of landline and mobile phones. We show that for the period 2000-2009, time has a significant effect on both mobile phone penetration and coverage bias. In addition, the countries' development significantly affects the pace of these changes.

A multilevel problem concerns a population with a hierarchical structure. A sample from such a population can be described as a multistage sample. First, a sample of higher level units is drawn (e.g. schools or organizations), and next a sample of the sub‐units from the available units (e.g. pupils in schools or employees in organizations). In such samples, the individual observations are in general not completely independent. Multilevel analysis software accounts for this dependence and in recent years these programs have been widely accepted. Two problems that occur in the practice of multilevel modeling will be discussed. The first problem is the choice of the sample sizes at the different levels. What are sufficient sample sizes for accurate estimation? The second problem is the normality assumption of the level‐2 error distribution. When one wants to conduct tests of significance, the errors need to be normally distributed. What happens when this is not the case? In this paper, simulation studies are used to answer both questions. With respect to the first question, the results show that a small sample size at level two (meaning a sample of 50 or less) leads to biased estimates of the second‐level standard errors. The answer to the second question is that only the standard errors for the random effects at the second level are highly inaccurate if the distributional assumptions concerning the level‐2 errors are not fulfilled. Robust standard errors turn out to be more reliable than the asymptotic standard errors based on maximum likelihood.

The effectiveness of using a "not selling anything" introduction in encouraging people to participate in random sampling household telephone surveys is studied. Twenty-nine split run experiments conducted by multiple Dutch market research firms were performed to ascertain the efficacy of standard & nonsolicitation introductions & whether the latter introductions increased participant gain. The findings revealed that the use of the "not selling anything" introduction increased participant response rates by 2% regardless of the topic of the household telephone survey. Although the data analysis demonstrated that placement of the nonsolicitation technique at the beginning of an introduction provided the best participant response rate, it is revealed that such introduction methods worked equally well for general & special groups. The use of nonsolicitation introductions in carrying out household telephone interviews is also recommended since "not selling anything" introductions are easy & inexpensive to implement. 2 Tables, 31 References. J. W. Parker

"Meuleman and Billiet (2009) have carried out a simulation study aimed at the question how many countries are needed for accurate multilevel SEM estimation in comparative studies. The authors concluded that a sample of 50 to 100 countries is needed for accurate estimation. Recently, Bayesian estimation methods have been introduced in structural equation modeling which should work well with much lower sample sizes. The current study reanalyzes the simulation of Meuleman and Billiet using Bayesian estimation to find the lowest number of countries needed when conducting multilevel SEM. The main result of our simulations is that a sample of about 20 countries is sufficient for accurate Bayesian estimation, which makes multilevel SEM practicable for the number of countries commonly available in large scale comparative surveys." (author's abstract)

"In this article the authors examine the effect of a prepaid incentive on cooperation rates among ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. They find that the incentive did have a substantial positive effect on the cooperation rates among native sampled units and Western foreigners. Among Non-Western foreigners this effect was only modest. Furthermore, the authors also matched ethnic minorities with native sampled units using propensity score matching to compare the effect of the incentive on the cooperation rates among ethnic minorities and 'comparable' native sampled units. They found that the increase in cooperation rate was larger among natives compared to the increase in cooperation rate among ethnic minorities." (author's abstract)