Journal of Electoral Studies

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Mortality: The Threat to the Validity of Panel Studies

Lu-Huei Chen
1999 / 05
Volume 6, No.1

pp.175-206
10.6612/tjes.1999.06.01.175-206
Paper

Abstract

Mortality is a problem when it exits differential loss of respondents during our panel studies. By examining the 1990 - 1992 NES panel studies, I demonstrate that there were significant differences between the panel sample and the mortality sample on their political interest, political knowledge, and political participation. Mortality undermines the external validity when our research interest is to describe the political interest, political knowledge, and political participation of the mass public.When the selection process correlates with some variables in our model, mortality also undermines the internal validity of our research. I demonstrate that we will underestimate the importance of the respondent's age and his /her interest on newspaper on explaining his /her voting participation when we have the mortality problem in our panel studies. When we want to explain the importance of incumbent advantage, mortality makes us overestimate the importance of Democrat's incumbency and underestimate the importance of Republican incumbency.Participating in panel studies is a function of the respondent's interest and attitudes toward surveys. We shall always keep this in mind since the respondent's cooperation is the key point for the success of survey research. As the nonresponse rate increases in most surveys, social scientists have the obligation to make our interview more pleasant for our respondents.

Keywords

internal validity

external validity

mortality

panel studies

political participation

survey research