Question

Topic: Research/Metrics

Diary Panel: Sample Selection Bias

Posted by Anonymous on 4/29/2008 at 5:30 AM ET 50 Points
I have came across an article (online) written by Louise Corti on "Using Diaries in Social Research" which was published in Social Research Update, Issue 2, March 1993. She has written the following in her paragraph on Data Quality & Response Rate: Literacy: "All methods that involve self-completion of information demand that the respondent has a reasonable standard of literacy. Thus diary sample and the data may be biased towards the population of competent diary keepers."
I'm not quite clear with the meaning of the last sentence - how would it be biased and if this is the case, how does this effect your findings and how would you intepret the findings? Is this good or bad or is it just a matter of stating one of the limitations of the technique?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by adammjw on 4/29/2008 at 5:46 AM Accepted
    The question is what is beeing researched and what's the objective.If general conclusions are supposed to be drawn basing on the diary keepers' responses then IMO,according to the author,we should be aware that the sample used may not be representative of the population as a whole as resondents are assumed to be more literate than the population average.
  • Posted on 4/29/2008 at 5:52 AM Author
    Hi Adam,

    Thank you for your explanation. I understand it better now.

    Thanks so much!
  • Posted on 4/29/2008 at 9:00 AM Accepted
    Diary panel data is biased for numerous reasons - for example, older women tend to fill them out at a higher rate than younger men. For this reason, diary panel is "weighted" so that it is more representative of the general population. Weighting systems are developed so that populations which are under represented in the diary panel data are given more wieght when analyzing results.

    Hope this helps.

  • Posted on 4/29/2008 at 9:10 PM Author
    Thanks jlevin.

    So diary panel is a quant study? Don't know what made me think that it's a qual!
  • Posted on 5/1/2008 at 8:22 PM Author
    Dear adam & jlevin,

    Thank you for your contribution. Really appreciate your effort & time to help me out!

    Have a great weekend!

    aziah
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