Chasing Hard-to-Get Cases in Panel Surveys: Is it Worth it?

Abstract

In many population surveys, fieldwork effort tends to be disproportionately concentrated on a relatively small proportion of hard-to-get cases. This article examines whether this effort is justified within a panel survey setting. It considers three questions: (i) are hard-to-get cases that are interviewed different from other interviewed cases? (ii) do cases that require a lot of effort in one survey wave require a lot of effort in all waves? and (iii) can easy-to-get cases be re-weighted to eliminate biases arising from not interviewing hard-to-get cases? Using data from a large nationally representative household panel survey, we find that hard-to-get cases are distinctly different from e..