The Association Between Hospital Characteristics and Nonresponse in an Organization Survey: An Analysis of the National Healthcare Establishment and Workforce Survey in Malaysia

Abstract

In any survey where some of the invited participants fail to respond estimates may be biased. The literature on survey nonresponse is substantial, and the intellectual focus has typically been on the nonresponse of individuals. An important yet less scrutinized area in the analysis of nonresponse is in organizational surveys, particularly surveys of health-care organizations. This study used data from the 2010 National Healthcare Establishment and Workforce Survey in Malaysia to examine the relationship between a set of measurable hospital attributes and their probability of survey response and the relationship between this probability and the differences in survey estimates. We found that readily measurable hospital characteristics such as size and geographical location are useful predictors of survey response likelihood. Larger hospitals and hospitals located in less developed geographical regions responded more favorably than their counterparts. We have also illustrated that the resulting response pattern affected some key survey estimates. These findings have the potential to extend our understanding of nonresponse to organization surveys in the health-care sector, potentially allow for the prediction of nonresponse, and help researchers to identify profiles of "reluctant responders" before a survey commences, so that additional engagement strategies may be used.

Analysing Establishment Survey Non-Response Using Administrative Data and Machine Learning

“…Although Hecht et al (2019) and Foo et al (2019) find no age effect, Phipps and Jones (2007) find a positive age effect. Hence, we hypothesise that older establishments are more likely to respond than younger ones.…”

The Effect of the Familiarity of a Survey Sender on Response Outcomes in a Large-Scale Survey of Emergency Medical Services Agencies

“…Low response can potentially result in nonresponse bias (Foo et al, 2019;Fulton, 2018), which is difficult to identify in organizational surveys (Lewis et al, 2013). Because organizational surveys are completed by individual informants within the organization, best practices in improving response to surveys of individuals may also be relevant for organizationallevel surveys.…”