EXAMPLE 6 How Bad Is Nonresponse?

The CPS (Example 1, page 293) has the lowest nonresponse rate of any poll we know. Only about 4% of the households in the CPS sample refuse to take part, and another 3 or 4% can’t be contacted. People are more likely to respond to a government survey such as the CPS, and the CPS contacts its sample in person before doing later interviews by phone. (On a related note, the national mail participation rate for the 2010 Census was 74%.)

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What about polls done by the media and by market research and opinion polling firms? We don’t know their rates of nonresponse because they won’t say. That nondisclosure is a bad sign. The Pew Research Center imitated a telephone survey and published the results: out of 2879 households called, 1658 were never at home, refused the interview, or would not finish it. That’s a nonresponse rate of , or about 58%.