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Showing posts from March, 2017

Every Hard-to-Interview Respondent is Difficult in their Own Way...

The title of this post is a paraphrase of a saying coined by Tolstoi. " Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I'm stealing the concept to think about survey respondents.  To simplify discussion, I'll focus on two extremes. Some people are easy respondents. No matter what we do, no matter how poorly conceived, they will respond. Other people are difficult respondents. I would argue that these latter respondents are heterogenous with respect to the impact of different survey designs on them. That is, they might be more likely to respond under one design relative to another. Further, the most effective design will vary from person to person within this difficult group.  It sounds simple enough, but we don't often carry this idea into practice. For example, we often estimate a single response propensity, label a subset with low estimated propensities as difficult, and then give them all some extra thing (often more money).