Description: 

This advanced seminar will explore issues of nonresponse indicators, nonresponse bias, and nonresponse bias measurement in surveys that use responsive designs. The course will reviews the small but growing literature on nonresponse indicators and a larger but still incomplete literature on responsive design. Responsive design is a collection of techniques designed to manage to a fixed budget and to reduce nonresponse bias in survey data collection. While responsive design has been shown to reduce nonresponse rates, there is insufficient evidence that it reduces nonresponse bias as well. Students will present weekly on selected readings drawn from these literatures, and will prepare either a paper summarizing the literature or a detailed outline of a research protocol leading to a paper to investigate a problem identified in the course seminar discussions. It is a 2 credit course.