Patterns of item nonresponse behaviour to survey questionnaires are systematic and associated with genetic loci

Gianmarco Mignogna, Caitlin E. Carey, Robbee Wedow (), Nikolas Baya, Mattia Cordioli, Nicola Pirastu, Rino Bellocco, Kathryn Fiuza Malerbi, Michel G. Nivard, Benjamin M. Neale, Raymond K. Walters and Andrea Ganna ()
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Gianmarco Mignogna: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Caitlin E. Carey: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Robbee Wedow: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Nikolas Baya: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Mattia Cordioli: University of Helsinki
Nicola Pirastu: University of Edinburgh
Rino Bellocco: University of Milano-Bicocca
Kathryn Fiuza Malerbi: Purdue University
Michel G. Nivard: Vrije Universiteit
Benjamin M. Neale: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Raymond K. Walters: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Andrea Ganna: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023, vol. 7, issue 8, 1371-1387

Abstract: Abstract Response to survey questionnaires is vital for social and behavioural research, and most analyses assume full and accurate response by participants. However, nonresponse is common and impedes proper interpretation and generalizability of results. We examined item nonresponse behaviour across 109 questionnaire items in the UK Biobank (N = 360,628). Phenotypic factor scores for two participant-selected nonresponse answers, ‘Prefer not to answer’ (PNA) and ‘I don’t know’ (IDK), each predicted participant nonresponse in follow-up surveys (incremental pseudo-R2 = 0.056), even when controlling for education and self-reported health (incremental pseudo-R2 = 0.046). After performing genome-wide association studies of our factors, PNA and IDK were highly genetically correlated with one another (rg = 0.73 (s.e. = 0.03)) and with education (rg,PNA = −0.51 (s.e. = 0.03); rg,IDK = −0.38 (s.e. = 0.02)), health (rg,PNA = 0.51 (s.e. = 0.03); rg,IDK = 0.49 (s.e. = 0.02)) and income (rg,PNA = –0.57 (s.e. = 0.04); rg,IDK = −0.46 (s.e. = 0.02)), with additional unique genetic associations observed for both PNA and IDK (P

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01632-7

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