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International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2008 20(4):494-506; doi:10.1093/ijpor/edn041
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.

Nonresponse Bias on Dimensions of Political Activity Amongst Political Elites

Jacob M. Montgomery, Alexandra Cooper, Jerome Reiter and Shuo Guan

Address correspondence to: Jacob Montgomery, Social Science Research Institute, Duke University, Bay B, Erwin Mill, 2024 Main St, Durham, NC 27705, USA, E-mail: jmm61@duke.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Virtually all political surveys of citizens’ political behavior suffer from unit nonresponse. Typically, researchers’ analyses implicitly assume that the nonrespondents do not differ systematically from the respondents on dimensions of political activity (King, Honaker, Joseph, & Scheve, 2001). For example, regressions fit with only respondents assume that the model for respondents applies equally to nonrespondents. When such similarity assumptions are not valid, conclusions from standard statistical analyses can lead to inaccurate inferences. The potential for nonresponse bias is especially worrisome in surveys of political elites, who sometimes have low response rates (e.g., McClosky, Hoffmann, & O’Hara, 1960; Hedges, 1984; Whitehead, Blankenship, & Wright, 1999; Goldstein, 2003).

Low response rates do not indicate bias in estimates per se (Groves, 2006). To assess the potential for bias, the survey researcher needs external information gathered independently of response decisions. For example, in some surveys it is possible . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   DATA
 

   RESULTS
 
Employment
Contribution Size
Donation Patterns
Candidate Stratum

   DISCUSSION
 

   CONCLUSION
 

   APPENDIX: SURVEY QUESTIONs
 

   FUNDING
 

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