### Responsive Design and Surveys with Short Time Frames

Another interesting question that I had during the webinar that I recently gave concerned responsive design and surveys with short time frames. I have to say, I mostly work on surveys with relatively long time frames. The shortest data collection that I have worked on in the last few years is about one month.

That's not to say that I think responsive design is not relevant for surveys with short field periods. I think it is. If anything, following the prescribed regimen may be more important. A key aspect of responsive design, in my mind, is that the process is pre-planned. The indicators that are monitored, the decision rules for implementing interventions, the interventions, all have to be pre-planned. In a short survey, this is particularly important as their isn't time for developing ad hoc solutions.

In a former life, I worked on surveys that had field periods of a day or two. In those studies, there wouldn't have been time to meet, discuss, and decide. Given the short time frame, I could imagine that changes would more likely be made at the case level. Groves and Heeringa defined phases as a consistent set of design features over some period of time. In such a short study, rules might have to be specified for actions that are taken at the case level, possibly actions that are automated by sample management systems in CATI surveys or through various email options for web surveys.

I think it would work. I'd be interested to hear about any experiences with studies like this.

### "Responsive Design" and "Adaptive Design"

My dissertation was entitled "Adaptive Survey Design to Reduce Nonresponse Bias." I had been working for several years on "responsive designs" before that. As I was preparing my dissertation, I really saw "adaptive" design as a subset of responsive design.

Since then, I've seen both terms used in different places. As both terms are relatively new, there is likely to be confusion about the meanings. I thought I might offer my understanding of the terms, for what it's worth.

The term "responsive design" was developed by Groves and Heeringa (2006). They coined the term, so I think their definition is the one that should be used. They defined "responsive design" in the following way:

1. Preidentify a set of design features that affect cost and error tradeoffs.
2. Identify indicators for these costs and errors. Monitor these during data collection.
3. Alter the design features based on pre-identified decision rules based on the indi…

### An Experimental Adaptive Contact Strategy

I'm running an experiment on contact methods in a telephone survey. I'm going to present the results of the experiment at the FCSM conference in November. Here's the basic idea.

Multi-level models are fit daily with the household being a grouping factor. The models provide household-specific estimates of the probability of contact for each of four call windows. The predictor variables in this model are the geographic context variables available for an RDD sample.

Let $\mathbf{X_{ij}}$ denote a $k_j \times 1$ vector of demographic variables for the $i^{th}$ person and $j^{th}$ call. The data records are calls. There may be zero, one, or multiple calls to household in each window. The outcome variable is an indicator for whether contact was achieved on the call. This contact indicator is denoted $R_{ijl}$ for the $i^{th}$ person on the $j^{th}$ call to the $l^{th}$ window. Then for each of the four call windows denoted $l$, a separate model is fit where each household is assum…

### Goodhart's Law

I enjoy listening to the data skeptic podcast. It's a data science view of statistics, machine learning, etc. They recently discussed Goodhart's Law on the podcast. Goodhart's was an economist. The law that bears his name says that "when a measure becomes a target, then it ceases to be a good measure." People try and find a way to "game" the situation. They maximize the indicator but produce poor quality on other dimensions as a consequence. The classic example is a rat reduction program implemented by a government. They want to motivate the population to destroy rats, so they offer a fee for each rat that is killed. Rather than turn in the rat's body, they just ask for the tail. As a result, some persons decide to breed rats and cut off their tails. The end result... more rats.

I have some mixed feelings about this issue. There are many optimization procedures that require some single measure which can be either maximized or minimized. I think thes…