IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/iserwp/2004-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The long-term effectiveness of refusal conversion procedures on longitudinal surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Burton, Jonathan
  • Laurie, Heather
  • Lynn, Peter

Abstract

Survey organisations often attempt to 'convert' sample members who refuse to take part in a survey. Persuasive techniques are used in an effort to get the refusers to change their mind and agree to an interview. This is done in order to improve response rate and, possibly, to reduce non-response bias. However, refusal conversion attempts are expensive and must be justified. Previous studies of the effects of refusal conversion attempts are few and have been restricted to cross-sectional surveys. The criteria for 'success' of a refusal conversion attempt are different in the case of a longitudinal survey, where for many purposes the researcher requires complete data over multiple waves. This paper uses data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from 1994 to 2002 to assess the long term effectiveness of refusal conversion procedures in terms of sample sizes, sample composition and data quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Burton, Jonathan & Laurie, Heather & Lynn, Peter, 2004. "The long-term effectiveness of refusal conversion procedures on longitudinal surveys," ISER Working Paper Series 2004-11, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2004-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/publications/working-papers/iser/2004-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. F. Thomas Juster & Richard Suzman, 1995. " An Overview of the Health and Retirement Study," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30, pages s7-s56.
    2. Lynn, Peter & Clarke, Paul, 2001. "Separating refusal bias and non-contact bias: evidence from UK national surveys," ISER Working Paper Series 2001-24, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pudney, Stephen & Watson, Nicole, 2013. "If at first you don't succeed? Fieldwork, panel attrition, and health-employment inferences in BHPS and HILDA," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-27, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Laura Fumagalli & Heather Laurie & Peter Lynn, 2013. "Experiments with methods to reduce attrition in longitudinal surveys," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(2), pages 499-519, February.
    3. Chadi, Adrian, 2014. "Dissatisfied with Life or with Being Interviewed? Happiness and Motivation to Participate in a Survey," Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100505, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Jörg-Peter Schräpler & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2013. "Conversion of Non-Respondents in an Ongoing Panel Survey: The Case of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 626, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Nicole Watson & Mark Wooden, 2011. "Re-engaging with Survey Non-respondents: The BHPS, SOEP and HILDA Survey Experience," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2011n02, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2004-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jonathan Nears). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.