adaptive design

This is a follow-up on why I think panel surveys need to adapt their data collection strategies to target individual respondents . Let me first note that apart from limiting nonresponse error, there are other reasons why we would want to do this. We can limit survey costs by using expensive survey resources only for people who need them. A focus on nonresponse alone can be too limited. For example: imagine we want to measure our respondents’ health.

Last week, I gave a talk at Statistics Netherlands (slides here ) about panel attrition. Initial and nonresponse and dropout from panel surveys have always been a problem. A famous study by Groves and Peytcheva ( here ) showed that in cross-sectional studies, nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias are only weakly correlated. In panel surveys however, all the signs are there that dropout in a panel study is often related to change.