Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/712922
Abstract
Survey nonresponse and attrition undermine the validity of many and possibly most econometric estimates. We propose that survey administrators and evaluators proactively create an instrument for observation, for example, by ex ante randomizing participants to differing intensity of follow-up. We illustrate how to apply our proposed methodology using a carefully conducted randomized controlled trial, the Moving to Opportunity demonstration project, which de facto randomly assigned a subset of subjects to more intensive follow-up. The approach yields treatment effect estimates similar to the unbiased estimator based on complete administrative data and has narrower confidence intervals than alternative bounding approaches.
Disciplines
Labor Economics | Law | Law and Economics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
John DiNardo, Jordan Matsudaira, Justin McCrary & Lisa Sanbonmatsu,
A Practical Proactive Proposal for Dealing with Attrition: Alternative Approaches and an Empirical Example,
39(S2)
J. Labor Econ.
S507
(2021).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3691
Comments
© 2021 by The University of Chicago.