Join us on Tuesday, November 13th at Noon in Tome 115 for our next Math/CS Chat.  Chandra Erdman will present "Predicting Response Propensities and Setting Response Rate Expectations in Large National Surveys".  Free pizza and everyone is welcome to attend.

Abstract: The U.S. Census Bureau’s national surveys include the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the National Health Interview Survey, and the National Crime and Victimization Survey. It is evident from their names that these surveys are diverse in content and level of privacy, and this leads to variation in response rates. Given increasing cost and other resource constraints, there is a clear need to have a good understanding of expected response rate variation that may affect decisions on data collection efforts.  Understanding this variation can be useful in determining when additional field effort on a case may not be cost-effective and in setting realistic interviewer performance expectations.  This talk presents the statistical techniques used by the U.S. Census Bureau in predicting survey case response propensities and in classifying small areas into strata to establish performance expectations for interviewers.