Impacts of cultural factors and mode of administration on item nonresponse for political questions in the European context

Abstract

We tested the impacts of Hofstede’s cultural factors and mode of administration on item nonresponse (INR) for political questions in the European Values Study (EVS). We worked with the integrated European Values Study dataset, using descriptive analysis and multilevel binary logistic regression models. We concluded that (1) modes of administration with an interviewer lead to an INR lower than those without an interviewer. In terms of Hofstede’s cultural factors, we concluded that (2) the higher the power distance index in the country, the lower the INR, (3) the higher the rate of individualism in the country, the higher the INR, and (4) the higher the uncertainty avoidance index, the lower the INR. These findings stress the importance of sensitive work with cross-national data, especially with increasingly abundant data from mixed-mode surveys.