Characteristics of Reluctant Respondents in the National Medical Expenditure Survey¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Cohen, Steven B.^a | Carlson, Barbara Lepidus^a

Affiliations: [a] Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Executive Office Center, Suite 500, 2101 E. Jefferson Street, Rockville, Maryland 20852, USA

Note: [1] The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and no official endorsement by the Department of Health and Human Services or the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research is intended or should be inferred. The authors wish to thank Ms. Susan Czechowicz, DSRM, for her statistical support, Ms. Devi Katikenini and Mr. Gary Moore with Social and Scientific Systems, Inc., for their programming support.

Abstract: A significant amount of survey resources are allocated to obtaining the participation of households that constitute the last ten percent of the survey response rate. Often, a substantial representation of these households were initial refusals to the survey. This paper is directed to an analysis of the factors that distinguished those households that required special efforts to obtain their participation in the National Medical Expenditure Survey. The quality of the data obtained from these reluctant respondents is examined, in addition to assessing the likelihood of achieving their cooperation for all required rounds of data collection. The results have significant design implications for future medical expenditure surveys.

DOI: 10.3233/JEM-1995-21402

Journal: Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 269-296, 1995