Previous research extensively studied reasons for and ways to avoid low response rates, but it largely ignored the primary research issue of the degree to which response rates matter, which we address. Methodological survey research on response rates has been concerned with how to increase responsiveness and with the effects of response rates on…

Nonresponse bias is a widely prevalent problem for data on education. We develop a ten-step exemplar to guide nonresponse bias analysis (NRBA) in cross-sectional studies and apply these steps to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011. A key step is the construction of indices of nonresponse bias based on proxy…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are an integral part of evaluating course outcomes. They are routinely used to evaluate teaching quality for the purposes of reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT), annual review, and the rehiring of adjunct faculty and lecturers. These evaluations are often based almost entirely on the mean or proportion…

This document provides tables underlying figures in "Education, Employment, and Earnings: Expectations of 2009 Ninth-Graders in 2016" and describes the survey methodology, sources of error in estimates, response rates and nonresponse bias, and statistical procedures for the Statistics in Brief report "Education, Employment, and…

This data file documentation accompanies new data files for the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) Postsecondary Education Transcript Study and Student Financial Aid Records Collection (PETS-SR). HSLS:09 follows a nationally representative sample of students who were ninth-graders in fall 2009 from high school into postsecondary…

This article describes the results of an experiment designed to examine the impact of the use and amount of delayed unconditional incentives in a mixed mode (push to web) supplement on response rates, response mode, data quality, and sample bias. The supplement was administered to individuals who participate in the U.S. Panel Study of Income…

We assessed the feasibility of ecological momentary assessment using short message service (SMS) surveying with 150 homeless youth. We found that on average, participants completed 18.8 days of texts, but 30% of youth (N = 44) had texting data on 28 or more days. The average number of texts answered per day was 8.49 (of a possible 11). Forty-three…

Respondent incentives are a popular instrument to achieve higher response rates in surveys. However, the use of incentives is still a controversial topic in the methodological literature with regard to the possible reduction or increase in response quality. We conducted an experiment in a large-scale German face-to-face study in which the…

The School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) is managed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. SSOCS collects extensive crime and safety data from principals and administrators of public schools in the United States. Data from this collection can be…

Respondent incentives are widely used to increase response rates, but their effect on nonresponse bias has not been researched as much. To contribute to the research, we analyze an incentive experiment embedded within the third wave of the German household panel survey "Panel Labor Market and Social Security" conducted by the German…

To collect reliable statistical data on domestic violence in Curaçao, we conducted a large-scale quantitative study (n = 816). To meet with the special needs of the population and topic, we designed a tailored mixed-mode survey to assess the prevalence of domestic violence in Curaçao and its health consequences. Great care was taken to reduce…

Self-reports of financial information in surveys, such as wealth, income, and assets, are particularly prone to inaccuracy. We sought to improve the quality of financial information captured in a survey conducted by phone and in person by encouraging respondents to check records when reporting on income and assets. We investigated whether…

This article is concerned with the extent to which the propensity to participate in a web face-to-face sequential mixed-mode survey is influenced by the ability to communicate with sample members by e-mail in addition to mail. Researchers may be able to collect e-mail addresses for sample members and to use them subsequently to send survey…

Although there are widely held assumptions about the characteristics of peer bullying that are of greatest concern, very few studies have empirically assessed which characteristics most affect its impact. The current research addresses this gap by using a nationally representative U.S. sample of youth ages 10-20 to examine the relative effects of…

Surveys often spend substantial money on multiple mailings and telephone calls to ensure high overall response rates and adequate representation of hard-to-reach demographic subgroups. We examine the extent to which an additional mailing and additional sets of telephone calls are effective in attaining these goals across a variety of subgroups in…