Trends in Establishment Survey Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias: Evidence from the 2001-2017 IAB Establishment Panel

Abstract

Evidence from the household survey literature shows a declining response rate trend in recent decades, but whether a similar trend exists for voluntary establishment surveys is an understudied issue. This article examines trends in nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias over a period of 17 years in the annual cross-sectional refreshment samples of the IAB Establishment Panel in Germany. In addition, rich administrative data about the establishment and employee composition are used to examine changes in nonresponse bias and its two main components, refusal and noncontact, over time. Our findings show that response rates dropped by nearly a third: from 50.2% in 2001 to 34.5% in 2017. Simultaneously, nonresponse bias increased over this period, which was mainly driven by increasing refusal bias whereas noncontact bias fluctuated relatively evenly over the same period. Nonresponse biases for individual establishment and employee characteristics did not show a distinct pattern over time with few exceptions. Notably, larger establishments participated less frequently than smaller establishments over the entire period. This implies that survey organizations may need to put more effort into recruiting larger establishments to counteract nonresponse bias.

Establishment survey participation during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The latter finding is, however, typical of voluntary establishment surveys and may be driven by other factors unrelated to the pandemic (e.g. Earp et al 2018;Hecht et al 2019;König et al 2021;Küfner et al 2022).…”

“…To analyze nonresponse bias, researchers often compare respondents and nonrespondents using auxiliary information available for both groups (Lineback and Thompson 2010). As illustrated in previous research (Janik and Kohaut 2012;König et al 2021;Küfner et al 2022;Rothbaum et al 2021), extensive administrative data are a promising source of auxiliary information for studying nonresponse bias that overcomes the limitations of other auxiliary sources, such as sampling frame data, paradata, or comparisons between early and late respondents.…”

“…The most prominent example is establishment size. Most studies find that larger establishments are less likely to participate in surveys than smaller ones (Janik and Kohaut 2012;Earp et al 2018;Hecht et al 2019;König et al 2021;Küfner et al 2022), with some exceptions for surveys that implement special treatments on larger establishments, including adaptive recruitment strategies (Davis and Pihama 2009;Seiler 2014). Nonresponse biases are also found for industry type (Tomaskovic-Devey et al 1995), survey topic (HMRC 2010Snijkers et al 2013;Snijkers 2018;Küfner et al 2022), establishment age (Phipps and Jones 2007), average wages (Phipps et al 2012;Küfner et al 2022), and region of the establishment (Janik 2011;König et al 2021), among others.…”

“…For this reason, investigations of nonresponse bias are important for assessing the quality of establishment survey data (e.g. Lineback and Thompson 2010;Earp et al 2018;König et al 2021;Küfner et al 2022). 1 This study analyzes survey participation and nonresponse bias in the IAB-JVS during the COVID-19 pandemic by accomplishing four research objectives.…”

Introducing Web in a Mixed-Mode Establishment Survey: Effects on Nonresponse

“…Not surprisingly, voluntary surveys typically have lower response rates than mandatory ones (Petroni et al, 2004). Moreover, large establishments are especially less likely to participate compared to smaller ones (Earp et al, 2018; Hartmann & Kohaut, 2000; Hecht et al, 2019; Janik & Kohaut, 2012; Phipps & Toth, 2012; König et al 2021). This serves as a major threat to business data as large establishments have a disproportionate influence on survey estimates.…”