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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Examination of Different Types of Item Nonresponse in the 2000 President Election Survey in Taiwan

The Examination of Different Types of Item Nonresponse in the 2000 President Election Survey in Taiwan

Su-Hao Tu
2004 / 11
Volume 11, No.2

pp.111-131
10.6612/tjes.2004.11.02.111-131
Paper

Abstract

This paper takes the survey of 2000 president election as an example to explore the reasons behind two types of item non-response- “don’t remember” and “refusal”-from an integrative research framework based on Cognition, Motivation, and Social situation theories. Two-level multinomial model was used to analyze the data collected from Taiwan Social Change Survey. “Don’t remember”, relative to the substantive response, was found to be affected by cognition- and motivation-related variables such as respondent age, education and political attitudes, while “refusal was affected” by motivation- and situation-related variables like political attitudes and interviewer gender. The results support simultaneous two- way response process developed by Cannell, Miller and Oksenberg (1981) and reinforce the importance of interviewer effect in the analysis of item nonresponse. Suggestions, in empirical and theoretical terms, were discussed.

Keywords

item non-response

don' t remember

refusal

non-valid response

cognition

motivation

social situation