Partial non-response in political elite studies: an approach to parliamentary elites in Latin America

This paper provides empirical evidence on the prevalence and explanation of partial non-response in surveys conducted among political elites. We use data from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America (PELA) project, a face-to-face survey conducted in each Latin American country for each legislative period over the last 25 years. Given the scarce literature on partial non-response in relation to elites, we use some of the explanations found in citizen survey studies as a starting point. Taking into account the multilevel nature of the data (parliamentarians grouped into countries and legislative periods or waves), we have estimated a multilevel Poisson model with two levels. First level (individual) variables are: gender, age, education level, and legislative experience. Second level (contextual) variables are: country and survey wave. In a second model, we also included the gender of the research team as a control variable. Results show that variables explaining a higher rate of partial non-response in elites are, as with studies among the general population, the age and gender of the interviewee. Older representatives and female legislators tend to indicate ‘don’t know’ or ‘no answer’ more frequently than younger and male representatives. Furthermore, part of the variation in non-response rates can be attributed to the country and survey wave.