Item-nonresponse in a household sample survey in Colombia

Abstract

Item nonresponse occurs when sample units do not provide information on a particular variable, problem that may affect the representativeness of the sample and the reliability of the estimates. Efforts to reduce the item nonresponse rate do not necessarily improve the quality of the information. Besides the nonresponse rate, representativeness indicators can be used to measure the quality of the collected data. This paper analyzes the wage nonresponse mechanism of a household survey in Colombia and evaluates the quality of the wage information in two different periods of time (2008:4 and 2017:4). The results show a low but increasing nonresponse rate whose behavior does not seem to be associated with the set of observables considered. This result is of value since the selection of the adequate imputation method relies on the assumptions on the missing data mechanism.