Factors in Errors of Omission on a Self-Administered Paper Questionnaire

Abstract

This article examines the role of question and respondent characteristics on omission errors made on the 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) questionnaire. Higher omission error rates were found for items with open-ended response formats, items placed outside of the body of the questionnaire, and items following skip instructions. Respondent and survey completion characteristics seen to impact omission error included age, education level, household income level, and the amount of time respondents reported having spent on the questionnaire.

Notes

¹A questionnaire was determined to be partially completed if the respondent had at least filled out key health communication items.

²Questions in which the question stem was more than 25 words but it was followed by a series of component items were not included as many of these question stems were primarily composed of introductory instructions.

³The nonskip item with the highest OE rate, 10.3%, asked respondents to indicate their household income level.

⁴Only 2% of those who selected the nonskip category at H10, “yes,” did not answer item H10a.

⁵As this dependent variable is actually ordinal, a multinomial regression was also carried out. This resulted in similar findings with the exception that the coefficient for respondents in the $50,000–$99,000 income range was significant at the 0.06 significance level rather than the 0.01 significance level.

*p ≤ .05, **p ≤ .01, ***p ≤ .001.

⁶This is calculated for the 16 nondemographic items at which all respondents could make a skip error.

⁷These figures are also calculated for the items included in the dependent variable (i.e., they do not include omissions in the demographic section).

⁸This item was used to calculate the within-household response rate. Ironically, it was placed at the beginning of the book to increase the chance that it would be filled out.

⁹This includes nonskip omission rates.