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Interagency Household
Survey Nonresponse Group
Purpose and History
The Interagency Household Survey Nonresponse Group (IHSNG) is a
subcommittee of the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology. In the
Spring of 1997, the Census Bureau and several of its sponsoring agencies
formed the new interagency committee to address current nonresponse
issues. As its first project, the group updated and reviewed nonresponse
rates since the last interagency group had done so some 10 years
earlier. The IHSNG focused its efforts on six large, continuing
household surveys. These included: the Current Population Survey (CPS),
the Consumer Expenditure Quarterly (CEQ), the Consumer Expenditure Diary
(CED), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the Survey of
Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the National Health
Interview Survey (NHIS).
The IHSNG was successful in documenting annual average nonresponse
rates between 1990-1997 for these surveys but in the process discovered
that the surveys lacked consistent definitions of nonresponse concepts
and statistics. Consequently, the group recommended that a core set of
nonresponse statistics be identified for comparison purposes across
surveys having different designs. They also recommended developing a set
of consistent nonresponse measures appropriate to the goals of specific
surveys (Atrostic
and Burt, 1999)
In 1999, staff from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) formed
subgroups to implement these recommendations (see Atrostic,
et. al, 2001; Bates,
Doyle and Winters, 2001; Silberstein
2000) (requires PDF
reader). The IHSNG also sponsored a subgroup to study the use of
expanded outcome codes and contact history data for personal visit
demographic surveys using the CEQ as a case study (see Smilay,
2001) (requires PDF
reader).
The IHSNG typically holds bi-monthly meetings during the first
Thursday of the month. Meetings are held at the Bureau of Labor
Statistics and the group maintains members from the Bureau of
Transportation Statistics, the Energy Information Administration, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Office of
Management and Budget, the National Center for Health Statistics, the
National Center for Education Statistics, and the Bureau of Justice
Statistics. Persons interested in joining the group should contact the
current IHSNG co-chairs, Nancy Bates of Census (nancy.a.bates@census.gov)
or John Dixon of BLS, (dixon_j@bls.gov)
for further information.
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