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Adequacy of Reporting Results of School Surveys and Nonresponse Effects: A Review of the Literature and a Case Study

MEGUMI KANO is a senior researcher at the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center, School of Public Health, University of California–Los Angeles, 10960 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1550, Los Angeles, CA 90024; megkano{at}ucla.edu. Her research focuses on school emergency preparedness, disaster epidemiology, disaster preparedness, and social research methodology.
TODD FRANKE is an associate professor in the Department of Social Welfare, School of Public Affairs, University of California–Los Angeles, and associate director of the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, 1100 Glendon Avenue, Suite 850, Los Angeles, CA 90024; tfranke{at}ucla.edu. His research focuses on quantitative methods and evaluation, the integration of health and social services in schools, and violence in the lives of children and adolescents.
ABDELMONEM A. AFIFI is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and associate director of the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center, School of Public Health, University of California–Los Angeles, 10960 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1550, Los Angeles, CA 90024; afifi{at}ucla.edu. His research focuses on injury prevention, health services research, multilevel modeling, and risk factor analysis.
LINDA B. BOURQUE is a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences and associate director of the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center and Center for Public Health and Disasters, School of Public Health, University of California–Los Angeles, 10960 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1550, Los Angeles, CA 90024; lbourque{at}ucla.edu. Her research focuses on disaster public health research, intentional and unintentional injury, and social research methodology.

To ensure accurate interpretation of research findings, researchers should report details about their research design, data collection method, and response rates when presenting findings from survey research. A review of 100 peer-reviewed articles reporting the results of survey research on K–12 schools with principals as the designated respondents revealed that such information is often not reported. Few studies examined or even acknowledged the potentially biasing effects of nonresponse. A mail survey of 470 schools in California, which yielded a response rate of 33% (157/470), is used as a case study to evaluate the pattern of nonresponse and its effects on univariate and multivariate statistics. Consistent with prior research, nonresponse produced bias in univariate estimates, but associations between variables were robust and not affected.

Key Words: data analysis • nonresponse • survey research • writing

Educational Researcher, Vol. 37, No. 8, 480-490 (2008)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X08326859


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