Open AccessCharacteristics of respondents and non-respondents to a mailed questionnaire.
Author(s) -
J Barton,
Christopher Bain,
C Hennekens,
Bernard Rosner,
Charlene Belanger,
A Roth,
Frank E. Speizer
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.70.8.823
Subject(s) - non response bias , residence , specialty , medicine , demography , cohort , population , family medicine , environmental health , gerontology , pathology , sociology
In establishing a cohort of U.S. nurses, an assessment of response bias was made comparing respondents and non-respondents with regard to age, education, state of residence, employment status, field of employment, and major specialty. Overall, the 122,328 respondents (69.7 per cent) and 43,222 non-respondents were quite similar. Together with the reasonable response rate in a homogeneous population, this suggests that estimation of exposure-disease associations is unlikely to be affected by major bias due to non-response.