America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers

How Does Diversity in Social Networks Impact Survey Response?

Survey professionals, including U.S. Census Bureau researchers and statisticians, have been grappling with how to maintain data quality when survey response rates are declining.

There have been various explanations for the decline in survey response rates that can jeopardize the quality of the data. Among them is the social capital hypothesis, which attributes the drop to declining social capital ? the strength of people?s friendship networks and community ties.

One important aspect of social capital is social networks, which describe who people?s friends and acquaintances are and how often people have friends from different backgrounds.

The Census Bureau explored the relationship between people?s social network and nonresponse rates and data quality and found that low survey response and data quality could be affected not only by the strength of people?s social networks but by how diverse they are.

Continue reading to learn more about:

• Social networks and survey response
• Nonresponse bias
• Social network diversity and ACS data quality

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