Can an Alternative Weighting Method Adapt for Differences in Multimode Collection?

To date, the research is sparse on the various approaches to weighting data from multimode surveys. A new article, An Adaptive Mode Adjustment for Multimode Household Surveys in the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, addresses this gap. Researchers explore an adjustment method to account for the fact that respondents use different modes to respond to survey questions. Authors of this new research include J. Michael Brick, Ph.D., and Ismael Flores-Cervantes, Ph.D., of Westat; and Courtney Kennedy, Ph.D., and Andrew W. Mercer, Ph.D., of the Pew Research Center.

Using 2 sequential mixed-mode surveys, they find that the adjustment method reduces bias while only slightly increasing variances of the estimates.