IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/somere/v42y2013i3p264-293.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Undercoverage Rates and Undercoverage Bias in Traditional Housing Unit Listing

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie Eckman
  • Frauke Kreuter

Abstract

Many face-to-face surveys use field staff to create lists of housing units from which samples are selected. However, housing unit listing is vulnerable to errors of undercoverage: Some housing units are missed and have no chance to be selected. Such errors are not routinely measured and documented in survey reports. This study jointly investigates the rate of undercoverage, the correlates of undercoverage, and the bias in survey data due to undercoverage in listed housing unit frames. Working with the National Survey of Family Growth, we estimate an undercoverage rate for traditional listing efforts of 13.6 percent. We find that multiunit status, rural areas, and map difficulties strongly correlate with undercoverage. We find significant bias in estimates of variables such as birth control use, pregnancies, and income. The results have important implications for users of data from surveys based on traditionally listed housing unit frames.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie Eckman & Frauke Kreuter, 2013. "Undercoverage Rates and Undercoverage Bias in Traditional Housing Unit Listing," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 42(3), pages 264-293, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:42:y:2013:i:3:p:264-293
    DOI: 10.1177/0049124113500477
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0049124113500477
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0049124113500477?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rainer Schnell, 2008. "Avoiding Problems of Traditional Sampling Strategies for Household Surveys in Germany: Some New Suggestions," Data Documentation 33, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Frauke Kreuter & Richard Valliant, 2007. "A survey on survey statistics: What is done and can be done in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, February.
    3. Elizabeth Martin, 2007. "Strength of attachment: Survey coverage of people with tenuous ties to residences," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 44(2), pages 427-440, May.
    4. Clifford Clogg & Michael Massagli & Scott Eliason, 1989. "Population undercount and social science research," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 21(6), pages 559-598, December.
    5. C. Casas-Cordero & F. Kreuter & Y. Wang & S. Babey, 2013. "Assessing the measurement error properties of interviewer observations of neighbourhood characteristics," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(1), pages 227-249, January.
    6. David Fein, 1990. "Racial and Ethnic Differences in U. S. Census Omission Rates," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 27(2), pages 285-302, May.
    7. Robert M. Groves & Steven G. Heeringa, 2006. "Responsive design for household surveys: tools for actively controlling survey errors and costs," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 169(3), pages 439-457, July.
    8. Kara Joyner & H. Peters & Kathryn Hynes & Asia Sikora & Jamie Taber & Michael Rendall, 2012. "The Quality of Male Fertility Data in Major U.S. Surveys," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(1), pages 101-124, February.
    9. Philipson, Tomas & Lawless, Thomas, 1997. "Multiple-output agency incentives in data production: experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 961-970, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Noah Uhrig, S.C., 2008. "The nature and causes of attrition in the British Household Panel Study," ISER Working Paper Series 2008-05, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Lipps Oliver & Voorpostel Marieke, 2020. "Can Interviewer Evaluations Predict Short-Term and Long-Term Participation in Telephone Panels?," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 36(1), pages 117-136, March.
    3. Brady T. West & Dan Li, 2019. "Sources of Variance in the Accuracy of Interviewer Observations," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(3), pages 485-533, August.
    4. Ronald R. Rindfuss & Minja K. Choe & Noriko O. Tsuya & Larry L. Bumpass & Emi Tamaki, 2015. "Do low survey response rates bias results? Evidence from Japan," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(26), pages 797-828.
    5. Reza C. Daniels, 2012. "A Framework for Investigating Micro Data Quality, with Application to South African Labour Market Household Surveys," SALDRU Working Papers 90, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    6. Reist, Benjamin M. & Rodhouse, Joseph B. & Ball, Shane T. & Young, Linda J., 2019. "Subsampling of Nonrespondents in the 2017 Census of Agriculture," NASS Research Reports 322826, United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service.
    7. Brandon Vick, 2017. "Measuring links between labor monopsony and the gender pay gap in Brazil," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-28, December.
    8. Jiayun Jin & Caroline Vandenplas & Geert Loosveldt, 2019. "The Evaluation of Statistical Process Control Methods to Monitor Interview Duration During Survey Data Collection," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(2), pages 21582440198, June.
    9. Roger Tourangeau & J. Michael Brick & Sharon Lohr & Jane Li, 2017. "Adaptive and responsive survey designs: a review and assessment," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 180(1), pages 203-223, January.
    10. repec:iab:iabfda:201307(en is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Roberts Caroline & Vandenplas Caroline & Herzing Jessica M.E., 2020. "A Validation of R-Indicators as a Measure of the Risk of Bias using Data from a Nonresponse Follow-Up Survey," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 36(3), pages 675-701, September.
    12. Böhme, Marcus & Stöhr, Tobias, 2012. "Guidelines for the use of household interview duration analysis in CAPI survey management," Kiel Working Papers 1779, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    13. Karen Benjamin Guzzo & Sarah R. Hayford & Vanessa Wanner Lang, 2019. "Adolescent Fertility Attitudes and Childbearing in Early Adulthood," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 38(1), pages 125-152, February.
    14. Durrant Gabriele B. & Maslovskaya Olga & Smith Peter W. F., 2017. "Using Prior Wave Information and Paradata: Can They Help to Predict Response Outcomes and Call Sequence Length in a Longitudinal Study?," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 33(3), pages 801-833, September.
    15. Jake J. Hays, 2023. "Multipartner Fertility and Psychological Distress: Evidence for Social Selection," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(3), pages 1-30, June.
    16. Holly Matulewicz & Eric Grau & Arif Mamun & Gina Livermore, "undated". "Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE): PROMISE 60-Month Sampling and Survey Plan," Mathematica Policy Research Reports be402161c12e402392af9182e, Mathematica Policy Research.
    17. Sofie Marien & Marc Hooghe & Ellen Quintelier, 2010. "Inequalities in Non‐institutionalised Forms of Political Participation: A Multi‐level Analysis of 25 countries," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58(1), pages 187-213, February.
    18. Willems, Jurgen, 2015. "Individual perceptions on the participant and societal functionality of non-formal education for youth: Explaining differences across countries based on the human development index," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 11-20.
    19. Héctor R. Gertel & Roberto F. Giuliodori & Santiago Gastelu & María Luz Vera, 2011. "Beyond Results: What Makes the Difference Between Argentina, Chile and Mexico in PISA 2009?," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 6, in: Antonio Caparrós Ruiz (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 6, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 5, pages 88-100, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    20. Karen Benjamin Guzzo, 2014. "New Partners, More Kids," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 654(1), pages 66-86, July.
    21. Stephanie Coffey, PhD. & Jaya Damineni & John Eltinge, PhD. & Anup Mathur, PhD. & Kayla Varela & Allison Zotti, 2023. "Some Open Questions on Multiple-Source Extensions of Adaptive-Survey Design Concepts and Methods," Working Papers 23-03, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:42:y:2013:i:3:p:264-293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.