Evaluation of Alternative Weighting Approaches to Reduce Nonresponse Bias
Abstract:
With declining response rates, surveys increasingly rely on weighting adjustments to correct for potential nonresponse bias. The resulting increased need to improve survey weights faces two key challenges. First, additional auxiliary data are needed to augment the models used to estimate the weights. Depending on the properties of these auxiliary data, nonresponse bias can be reduced, left the same, or even increased. Thus, the second challenge is to be able to evaluate the alternative weights, when the assumption of “different estimates means less bias” may not hold. Ideally, data need to be collected from as many nonrespondents as possible to provide direct estimates of nonresponse bias. Read more