Pre-election polls sometimes fail to reach the purpose for which they are carried out: to provide accurate predictions of electoral out-comes. By looking at the 2006 Italian General Elections, this paper aims to assess the role that different factors play in determining the accuracy of the...

The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is the first study of its kind to have asked for permission to link to a range of administrative health records. Multivariate analysis is applied to investigate whether there is consent bias. We find that consent on the BHPS is not biased with respect to...

When performing data linkage, survey respondents need to provide their informed consent. Since not all respondents agree to this request, the linked dataset will have fewer observations than the survey dataset alone and bias may be introduced. By focusing on the role that survey design features...

To survey the general population, survey agencies often use sampling frames of landline numbers. However, these frames may exclude a relevant share of the target population. In 2012, 50% of Italian adults are excluded from the sampling frame, as they are unlisted (UN) or do not own a landline...

Subsequently published as Lynn, Peter, Sala, Emanuela (2006) 'Measuring change in employment characteristics: the effects of dependent interviewing', International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Oxford University Press. 18(4) Win., 500-509

We examine how dependent interviewing affects verbal interaction between interviewers and respondents in questions obtaining current employment details in the British Household Panel Study. Respondents experience few cognition problems when answering DI questions, but interruption and...

On surveys of businesses, the processes of making contact and obtaining co-operation are quite different from those on more frequently studied types of surveys, such as those of households or private individuals. We describe experiences and outcomes on a business survey and discuss lessons that...

Many studies of data collection processes for business surveys focus on issues related to how to increase response rates and how to reduce response burden. Additionally, some have focussed on measurement error. Issues related to non response bias, on the other hand, do not seem to be explicitly...