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Survey Participation in Taiwan: Evidence from the ESC Surveys

Su-Feng Cheng
2006 / 05
Volume 13, No.1

pp.163-195
10.6612/tjes.2006.13.01.163-195

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the outcomes of surveys throughout the past decade, as well as to evaluate the survey process. The results of this evaluation will be helpful for developing better research designs and methods in order to continue advancement in the field of survey implementation. The outcome rate in ESC surveys indicates that people in Taiwan are reluctant to comply with interview requests and tend to decline to be interviewed-response rates remained below the 40% mark for the entire decade. Increasing the contact rate did not result in more cooperation from respondents, as the response rate actually fell over the same time period. In addition, refusal rates increased significantly. Also notable is that among the six categories of reasons for failure, the proportion of refusals has increased, while other failures have decreased as a consequence of ESC's efforts to improve fieldwork methods. The data also indicate that males, young people (under the age of 40), and people with lower levels of education (without senior high school degree) were under-counted in almost every ESC survey. Results of a short questionnaire administered to respondents in the refusal samples of the 2000 ISVB survey show that it is possible that some people were still afraid to express their political beliefs in Taiwan. The results also indicate that participants and non-participants differed in age, education, ethnicity, party preference and unification- independence stance.

Keywords

survey

survey participation

non-response

survey process

survey quality