The effects of nonresponse and sampling omissions on estimates on various topics in federal surveys: Telephone and IVR surveys of address-based samples

Abstract

With declining response rates and challenges of using RDD sampling for telephone surveys, collecting data from address-based samples has become more attractive. Two approaches are doing telephone interviews at telephone numbers matched to addresses and asking those at sampled addresses to call into an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to answer questions. This study used in-person interviewing to evaluate the effects of nonresponse and problems matching telephone numbers when telephone and IVR were used as the initial modes of data collection. The survey questions were selected from major US federal surveys covering a variety of topics. Both nonresponse and, for telephone, inability to find matches result in important nonresponse error for nearly half the measures across all topics, even after adjustments to fit the known demographic characteristics of the residents. Producing credible estimates requires using supplemental data collection strategies to reduce error from nonresponse.