The bitter end? The close of the 2007 SCF field period

Abstract

Typically, the end of a survey field period is a point when a survey struggles to achieve what is seen as an acceptable response rate. Response is shaped by the decisions of field staff to continue applying effort and respondents to be open to persuasion. The situation is an uncomfortable one in that it is quite difficult to apply measurable standards to the process in a way that can be mapped with any precision into response probabilities. The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has long gone to the bitter end of the field period where the remaining possibilities of completed interviews are very slim, and in doing so has held response rates approximately constant over time. The hope is that this operational approach will allow as much constancy across time as possible in any response biases. Yet this is a costly approach that could not be justified easily if the last cases are not sufficiently different from cases collected earlier. This paper examines the set of the last cases collected for the 2007 SCF and describes the ways in which they differ from ones collected earlier in the field period. Some limited comparisons are also made with the nonrespondents.