Non-participation in epidemiological school-based surveys: using mixed methods to study predictors and modes of justification for (non-)participation at the school level

ABSTRACT

Response rates in epidemiological studies have generally been decreasing over the past decades. However, when the target group consists of adolescents and young adults, school-based surveys have hitherto been able to mitigate this problem: This age group can be reached relatively easy in the school context (e.g., as compared to reaching them by phone) with very low refusal rates at the student level. However, the present study used a mixed-methods approach and suggests that schools at the organizational level have meanwhile become the problematic bottleneck for school-based surveys, as they increasingly reject requests for study participation. The current article provides insights into promising means for counteracting this trend. Researchers are advised to offer flexible timeframes for schools’ participation and to involve institutional gatekeepers who are endorsing their study. Furthermore, researchers, funding agencies, and schools would benefit from joint regional survey coordination systems. Such means will be crucial for the representativeness of future school-based epidemiological surveys.

KEYWORDS:

• School-based
• response rate
• epidemiological studies
• non-participation
• nonresponse bias

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest

Additional information

Funding

The ‘Swiss Youth Mental Health Literacy and Stigma Survey’ was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number: 10001C_173235). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Michelle Dey

Michelle Dey, PhD, works at the Swiss Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on social epidemiology and mental health (in particular on mental health literacy and stigma). She is the PI of the ‘Swiss Youth Mental Health Literacy and Stigma Survey’, i.e. the survey that was used for the current article.

Laurent Marti

Laurent Marti, MA, is a PhD student at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, and a project collaborator at the Swiss Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction, University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research focuses on organizational phenomena in various sectors, such as the mental health and third sector as well as the digital economy. He is the deputy PI of the ‘Swiss Youth Mental Health Literacy and Stigma Survey’.

Laura Alexandra Helbling

Laura Alexandra Helbling, PhD, works at the Institute for Educational Evaluation at the University of Zurich with a focus on research in the field of educational transitions, academic performance development and learning analytics. She was responsible for the survey sampling of schools and students as basis for the current article.

Anthony Francis Jorm

Anthony Francis Jorm, PhD, DSc, is an Emeritus Professor and NHMRC Leadership Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on building community capacity for prevention and early intervention with mental disorders. He is a PT on the ‘Swiss Youth Health Literacy and Stigma Survey’.