Mihelic A H, Crimmins E M
Department of Population Dynamics, School of Hygeine and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 1997 Jan;52B(1):S37-48. doi: 10.1093/geronb/52b.1.s37.
Loss to follow-up is a problem in longitudinal samples, and the literature on response rates in panels of older persons suggests that they may be more vulnerable to nonrandom attrition and its consequent biases. The event history approach used in this study to determine the correlates of nonresponse addresses important shortcomings of previous analyses by incorporating time-varying covariates. Nonresponse is not random; persons of older ages, lower education, who live alone, rent (not own), have more functioning impairments, or have another sample person in the household are more likely to become nonrespondents. However, correction accounting for the effect of these correlates of nonresponse, as well as unobserved characteristics potentially affecting nonresponse, suggests that the association between these characteristics and the probability of nonresponse is not large enough to introduce bias. While these results are not portable to other analyses or panels, they do indicate that in this case, significant nonrandom nonresponse does not bias all related analytic results.
失访是纵向样本中的一个问题，关于老年人样本中应答率的文献表明，他们可能更容易受到非随机损耗及其随之而来的偏差影响。本研究中用于确定无应答相关因素的事件史方法，通过纳入随时间变化的协变量，解决了先前分析中的重要缺陷。无应答并非随机发生；年龄较大、受教育程度较低、独居、租房（而非自有住房）、功能障碍较多或家中有另一位样本对象的人更有可能成为无应答者。然而，在考虑这些无应答相关因素的影响以及可能影响无应答的未观察到的特征后进行校正，结果表明这些特征与无应答概率之间的关联不足以引入偏差。虽然这些结果不适用于其他分析或样本，但它们确实表明，在这种情况下，显著的非随机无应答不会使所有相关分析结果产生偏差。
