Using New Measures of Selection Bias to Develop General Adjustments for Survey Nonresponse

Music City Center 

Rapidly declining response rates in surveys across the world, regardless of the mode of data collection used, have forced survey statisticians and methodologists to consider alternative measures of the quality of survey estimates that allow for the possibility of non-ignorable selection mechanisms. This talk will introduce a number of recently-developed measures of selection bias in common survey estimates that provide survey statisticians with general methods of adjusting for the selection mechanisms associated with survey data sets, whether it arises from sampling or nonresponse, and whether the selection is ignorable or non-ignorable. These new measures are entirely model-based and enable users to perform sensitivity analyses, examining the potential bias in estimates introduced by more complex sampling and nonresponse mechanisms. Important considerations regarding the necessary auxiliary data sources for using the measures and available software implementing calculation of the measures (and corresponding adjustments to survey estimates) will be discussed as well.