title: Who responds to surveys? Assessing the effects of nonresponse in cross-sectional dyadic research.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to adapt Goodman and Blum's procedure for assessing the effects of nonrandom sampling in longitudinal research to a cross-sectional study of dyads. To demonstrate the impact of survey nonresponse on means, variances, and relationships between variables, data were collected from a sample of 311 recruiter-applicant pairs. Of the variables included in this investigation, only one (recruiter competence) significantly predicted the likelihood of responding. In addition, there were differences in the means and variances of respondents and nonrespondents on some of the variables included in this study. However, there were no differences in the relationships between independent and dependent variables for the respondent group compared with the entire group of respondents and nonrespondents. In sum, the results suggest that nonresponse does not bias the relationships between variables.
authors.affiliation: George Washington University, USA.
authors.forename: Caren B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Goldberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012044:Regression Analysis