Survey Disposition
A survey disposition encodes the outcome of an interview.
Contents
Description
A survey disposition encodes the most important information about how an individual interacted with a survey instrument. The major categories are:
- Eligible respondents
- Eligible nonrespondents
- Sample members with unknown eligibility
- Ineligible sample members
There are then subcategories with finer detail, for example the reason a sample member is ineligible.
Coding
AAPOR has published guidance to standardize the encoding of dispositions.
Major categories are an integer part, while minor categories are a decimal part. These codes can be truncated at any level to collapse subcategories into parent categories. For example, codes 4.11 and 4.12 may convey different survey items whereby sample members have indicated their ineligibility. If any analyst only need to know which cases self-identified as ineligible through any survey item, the codes can be truncated to the tenths decimal place; 4.11 and 4.12 become 4.1.
When working with a sample of specifically-named individuals, there is generally a presumption of eligibility. It follows that:
- An explicit refusal to participate in a survey, either as declining to give consent or as requesting to be removed from a contact list, is generally coded as eligible nonresponse.
- An incomplete survey response, either due to item nonresponse or due to technical issues, is generally coded as eligible nonresponse.
The exception is when contact is attempted but not necessarily successful. This leaves open the possibility that the specifically-named individual has e.g. moved, and is no longer member to the eligible population. Mailed surveys will often have many subcategories of unknown eligibility, corresponding to the various nixie codes returned by the postal service:
- Undeliverable as addresses
- Refused by addressee
- Vacant
- Deceased
- and so on
Similarly, a survey link that is shared by email can lead to a variety of email bouncebacks.
If responses are collected from a nonprobability panel, individuals often must be considered as having unknown eligibility until they provide survey responses indicating otherwise.
Nonprobability panel surveys also often incorporate live or rebalancing quotas which cause 'surplus' respondents to be terminated as 'over-quota'. In most cases these are treated as eligible nonrespondents.
A multi-modal survey has to incorporate components from each of the above, including a hierarchy to reconcile contradictory dispositioning information. For example, consider an individual that was sent a survey link in both a mailed postcard and an email. If a response is collected and one of those invites is returned with information, a decision must be made with regard to which information is more accurate.