… A National Academy of Sciences panel warned in 2013 that declining response rates “threaten to undermine the potential of household surveys to elicit information that assists in understanding social and economic issues.” …
Accurate surveys matter for a lot more than handicapping elections, marketing potato chips, or even conducting basic research. The nation’s essential data, including unemployment and vaccination rates, derives from people answering surveys, as does most of what we know about Americans’ finances, health, safety, and schooling. Survey results shape fateful decisions—national budgeting, Social Security planning, and Federal Reserve rate hikes, for example. CONT.
Claude S. Fischer (Berkeley), Boston Review