An assessment of the utility of a Bayesian framework to improve response propensity modes in longitudinal data

Eliud Kibuchi, Gabriele B. Durrant, Olga Maslovskaya and Patrick Sturgis

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Response propensity (RP) models are widely used in survey research to analyse response processes. One application is to predict sample members who are likely to be survey nonrespondents. The potential nonrespondents can then be targeted using responsive and adaptive strategies with the aim of increasing response rates and reducing survey costs. Generally, however, RP models exhibit low predictive power, which limits their effective application in survey research to improve data collection. This paper explores whether the use of a Bayesian framework can improve the predictions of response propensity models in longitudinal data. In the Bayesian approach existing knowledge regarding model parameters is used to specify prior distributions. In this paper we apply this approach and analyse data from the UK household longitudinal study, Understanding Society (first five waves) and estimate informative priors from previous waves data. We use estimates from RP models fitted to response outcomes from earlier waves as our source for specifying prior distributions. Our findings indicate that conditioning on previous wave data leads to negligible improvement of the response propensity models’ predictive power and discriminative ability.

Keywords: Bayesian; informative priors; nonresponse; response propensity models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2024-12-19
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Survey Research Methods, 19, December, 2024, 18(3), pp. 273 - 287. ISSN: 1864-3361

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126599/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:126599

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().