Response Rates to Gov Surveys Declining Significantly

3 points

8 months ago

Saw this graph[0] in a newsletter[1] and was quite surprised: Survey response rates in the US are below 70% vs over 90% in 2013. I think it's an interesting and negative side-effect of "technological progress" and the ease of communication these days. We're inundated and just want to shut everything off. Not to mention the endless spam calls (I don't answer any number not in my contacts, so a surveyor wouldn't be able to reach me.)

It's a significant problem because if survey responses are low that increases the error margin of the data, and it also means that the gov is just not hearing from its citizens as much.

There's a paper[2] on (some of) the reasons for this.

According to this[3], the UK has the same problem.

AI is only going to make this worse with the ease at which spam calls can be made without a human in the loop.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cps/methods/response_rates.htm

[1] https://kyla.substack.com/p/chicago-fed-president-austan-goolsbee

[2] https://academic.oup.com/jssam/article-abstract/12/5/1138/7658685?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[3] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/about/modernization.html