Suchergebnisse

A follow-up study of 524 former child-guidance clinic patients & 100 normal control subjects provides an unusual opportunity for studying diff's among 3 groups: (1) subjects who willingly cooperated with requests for a life history interview, (2) subjects who cooperated only after postponements & indecisiveness, & (3) subjects who refused the interview. Since a variety of records concerning both childhood behavior & adult adjustment of these subjects had been collected, it was possible to compare them with respect to variables not ordinarily available in survey res. The 10% of subjects who cooperated only after postponements & indecisiveness were distinguished from cooperative subjects only by being more often local (ie, living in the city which served as headquarters for the study). The 16% who initially refused were also found to come disproportionately from the local group, & were as well persons of low educ, with routine white collar occup's, & foreign-born parents. No signif diff's were found between the 27% of initial refusers finally persuaded to cooperate & the remaining refusers. Ex-patients, with a high rate of both psychiatric disease & serious antisoc behavior, appeared no more difficult to interview about their life histories than control subjects. Subjects reluctant to be interviewed appeared to give as valid interviews as the cooperative subjects, as judged by information obtained from police, Sch, & soc agency records. AA.

Members of the Instit for Sex Res interviewed 18,000 persons re their sexual experiences. They found that if the R's were convinced of the importance of usefulness of this res, if the information given were confidential, & if the interviewers did not evaluate, it was surprisingly easy to elicit accurate data. Methods of overcoming types of resistance are described. F interviewers were found to be as effective as M interviewers with both M & F R's. General reluctance vs reluctance over particular parts of the history is discussed. Emphasis is given to the need for an interviewer to control the interview. A knowledge of the vocabulary of the particular R & of the differential patterns of sexual life at diff soc levels is discussed. It is concluded that poorly trained interviewers & faulty interviewing create more reluctance on the part of R's than any other factors. AA.

Many surveys aim to achieve high response rates to keep bias due to nonresponse low. However, research has shown that the relationship between the nonresponse rate and nonresponse bias is small. In fact, high response rates may lead to measurement error, if respondents with low response propensities provide survey responses of low quality. In this paper, we explore the relationship between response propensity and measurement error, specifically, motivated misreporting, the tendency to give inaccurate answers to speed through an interview. Using data from four surveys conducted in several countries and modes, we analyze whether motivated misreporting is worse among those respondents who were the least likely to respond to the survey. Contrary to the prediction of our theoretical model, we find only limited evidence that reluctant respondents are more likely to misreport.

AbstractMany surveys aim to achieve high response rates to keep bias due to nonresponse low. However, research has shown that the relationship between the nonresponse rate and nonresponse bias is small. In fact, high response rates may lead to measurement error, if respondents with low response propensities provide survey responses of low quality. In this paper, we explore the relationship between response propensity and measurement error, specifically, motivated misreporting, the tendency to give inaccurate answers to speed through an interview. Using data from four surveys conducted in several countries and modes, we analyze whether motivated misreporting is worse among those respondents who were the least likely to respond to the survey. Contrary to the prediction of our theoretical model, we find only limited evidence that reluctant respondents are more likely to misreport.

Abstract
Survey experiments on probability samples are a popular method for investigating population-level causal questions due to their strong internal validity. However, lower survey response rates and an increased reliance on online convenience samples raise questions about the generalizability of survey experiments. We examine this concern using data from a collection of 50 survey experiments which represent a wide range of social science studies. Recruitment for these studies employed a unique double sampling strategy that first obtains a sample of "eager" respondents and then employs much more aggressive recruitment methods with the goal of adding "reluctant" respondents to the sample in a second sampling wave. This approach substantially increases the number of reluctant respondents who participate and also allows for straightforward categorization of eager and reluctant survey respondents within each sample. We find no evidence that treatment effects for eager and reluctant respondents differ substantially. Within demographic categories often used for weighting surveys, there is also little evidence of response heterogeneity between eager and reluctant respondents. Our results suggest that social science findings based on survey experiments, even in the modern era of very low response rates, provide reasonable estimates of population average treatment effects among a deeper pool of survey respondents in a wide range of settings.