Estimating the Nonresponse BiasDue to Refusals in Telephone Surveys

This paper attempts to aid the process of accumulating the necessaryinformation for making more informed judgments about the effectsof nonresponse under different conditions. Two measures, whichpermit quantifiable nonsubjective assessment of the effectsof nonresponse on sample estimates, are introduced and are usedto examine the effects of respondent refusals in a random-digit-dialedgeneral population telephone survey of over 1,200 householdsas the response rate isincreased from 74.5 percent to 86.8 percent.By applying these measures under a wide range of conditions,the adequacy of various response rates may be assessed and morerational decisions made about the costs and benefits of devotingextraordinary resources to minimizing nonresponse.     

Public Hearings and Public Preferences: The Case of the White House Conference on Families

To provide input into Arizona's participation in the White HouseConference on Families, the Arizona Governor's Council on Children,Youth, and Families commissioned a random statewide survey toassess the relative priority given to 41 selected family-relatedneeds and preferences for institutional responses to those needs.A similar survey was administered to participants at each ofsix regional public hearings held throughout the state priorto the 1980 White House Conference on Families. A comparisonof the two surveys provides an opportunity to test the representativenessof public hearings participants with respect to the populationfrom which they were drawn. Fundamental differences in the prioritiesof these two samples cast considerable doubt on the assumptionthat public hearings are an effective means of gauging publicsentiment.