Abstract
This study investigates the mechanisms determining item nonresponse focusing on three issues: First, is there significant heterogeneity in item non-response across financial questions and in the association of covariates with item non-response across outcomes? Second, can the informational value of surveys be improved by matching interviewers and respondents based on their characteristics? Third, how does offering a “don’t know” answer option affect respondent behavior? The questions are answered based on detailed survey and interviewer data from the German Socioeconomic Panel using a broad set of income and wealth outcomes. We find considerable heterogeneity in non-response across financial items, little explanatory power of interviewer-respondent matches and strong evidence that ‘‘don’t know’’ answers result from mechanisms that differ from those yielding valid responses and outright refusals to respond.
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We thank Jörg-Peter SchrPäpler for generous support regarding the interviewer data used in this study and two anonymuos referees, numerous participants of the GSOEP 2002 conference, of the 2003 meeting of the Ausschuss für Pökonometrie / Verein für Socialpolitik, and George Sheldon for very helpful comments.
First version received: June 2003 / Final version received: June 2004
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Riphahn, R.T., Serfling, O. Item non-response on income and wealth questions. Empirical Economics 30, 521–538 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-005-0247-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-005-0247-7