Question

A scholarly article about response rates begins with the following quote:

“Declining contact and cooperation rates in random digit dial (RDD) national telephone surveys raise serious concerns about the validity of estimates drawn from such research.”^{$\left[6\right]$}The Pew Research Center for People and the Press admits: “The percentage of people we interview – out of all we try to interview – has been declining over the past decade or more.”^{$\left[7\right]$}

a. What are some reasons for the decline in response rate over the past decade?

b. Explain why researchers are concerned with the impact of the declining response rate on public opinion polls.

Short answer

(a) The declining rate of responses is due to the respondents being less interested in answering the survey.

(b) The researchers are concerned because if respondents refuse to give a response then the sample size of the survey will decrease accordingly and a conclusion can't be drawn.

Step-by-step solution

Definition

The decline in response rate over the last decade is due to respondents disliking the survey's quote line or being uninterested in responding to the survey.

Explanation (part a)

Following are a few reasons for declining response rates:

• Busy schedule: People are ore occupied with multiple activities that they get no time to respond to calls related to the survey.
• Less availability at home: Most of the people are now working and hence can't respond to the call
• Wrong call timings: Most of the survey calls are done during office hours when people are unavailable at home to receive calls.
• Uninterested attitude: Most people consider answering survey calls as a waste of time and hence avoid such calls.

Explanation (part b)

Following are a few reasons for concern expressed by the researchers over the declining response rate to telephonic surveys:

• Inefficient sample: The sample so formed in which not many people participate over the telephone fails to cover the true population, hence resulting in an inefficient sample.
• Involves a lot of time and resources: The telephonic survey involves people and time. when not many people respond, the interviews are bound to call several times to cover other people, thus tending to invest more time and energy to get the minimum number of responses
• Low reliability and validity of the results of such survey: Since the survey involves an inefficient sample, the result obtained by such was less reliable.