ESRA 2025 sessions by theme

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Although face-to-face surveys are still considered the ‘gold standard’ in comparative probability-based surveys, there has been a notable shift towards self-completion surveys, especially in the combination of web and paper (push-to-web or concurrent modes). These modes are distinguished by the absence of fieldworkers’ involvement in the recruitment process. Indeed, the invitations are mainly sent by postal letters or, eventually, by email or SMS. This implies that no or very little information exists regarding the target person who does not react to such invitations or participate in the survey. In the context of face-to-face surveys, the entire recruitment process allows for the collection of a substantial amount of “paradata” that help describing both respondents and non-respondents and thus allow identifying factors of risk for non-response. This includes information taken by the interviewer, such as the time of the visit, the reaction of the target person when contacted, and the environment. Within self-completion, there is no information on the reasons and forms for non-participation. It is even impossible to distinguish between refusals and non-contacts. As self-completion becomes the main survey mode, survey researchers should pay more attention to the non-respondents of such surveys to better understand specific mechanisms of participation and non-participation in the current settings and find ways to improve response rates and/or mitigate non-response bias.
This session invites contributions that provide insights into non-respondents in today’s self-completion surveys. This can be done through non-respondent surveys, qualitative investigations of the reception of invitation letters, or any other method to examine non-respondents in self-completion surveys. Presentations on methods to monitor non-respondents during fieldwork are also highly welcome.