Non-Response in Surveys: Reasons, Consequences And

Prescriptions for Their Control

Arijit Chaudhuri
Applied Statistics Unit,
Indian Statistical Institute,
Kolkata

A well-known disquieting feature in Censuses and Sample Surveys is the phenomenon of

"Non-Responses". This inevitably induces 'Errors' in surveys. Suppose our purpose is to
ascertain the socio-economic conditions currently prevailing in a specific community. A
possible way to achieve this is to clearly specify the individuals we intend to cover and
then address a suitably designed questionnaire either to each of them or to a suitably
chosen sample out of them. Usually the parameters drawing our attention are totals of one
or more variables of interest taking values on these units or of some simple functions of
these totals. In case of a Census if values turn out missing for some of the units, the
parameter values cannot be accurately ascertained. In case of a sample survey the
sampling design prescribes certain suitably weighted sums of values of the sampled units
to provide appropriate estimates for the parameters defined by aggregation over the unit-
values. In case variate-values turn out missing for some of the units sampled then the
originally prescribed weighted sums of the values of the available sample units fail to be
correct estimates for the intended totals which are the parameters.
Many reasons can be ascribed for such 'misses' or 'non-responses'. knocking at the
door of a person intended to be covered may not find him/her 'At Home' to respond. A
person to be covered may not allow an interviewer any access to himself/herself. A
person interviewed may not agree to answer any question at all or some of the questions
at least addressed to him/her. This may be because he/she may not give out truths about
himself/herself because of personal dislikes. The interviewer may not be persuasive
enough to elicit a response needed. On providing suitable inducements a 'repeat' effort
may be more successful. In case of surveys other than on human behaviour at least
directly, for example, a crop survey, because of inhospitable location of the crop field it
may be difficult to gather data on crop production leading to misses.
The discrepancy between an ascertained value of a parameter and the true parametric
value in case of a census is called 'Bias'. Likewise the expected value of an estimator
minus the parameter it seeks to estimate is called the bias of the estimator.
There are essentially two distinct approaches to control bias in an estimator arising out
of ;Non-Response'. One is 'Weighting Adjustment' to cover the case when there is non-
response entirely for a selected unit. In case there is only partial non-response in respect
of only a few items in a questionnaire while response is available on other items from a
respondent the method used to tackle is called an "imputation Technique".
Suggested Further Reading Materials :

1. Madow, W.G. & Olkin, I. Eds (1983). incomplete data in sample surveys. Vol I
Academic Press, NY.
2. ___ & Olkin,I. Eds (1983) Do Vol III, Do
3. __, ___ & Rubin, D.B. Eds (1983), Do Vol II, Do, Do
4. Rubin, D.B. (1987). Multiple Imputation for Non-Response in surveys. Do, Do.