Social distance, respondent cooperation and item nonresponse in sex survey

This paper examines the ways in which the number of item nonresponses is determined by social distance and/or interview rapport, with a focus on responses of refusal and don't know, implying the respondent's lack of willingness and ability to provide substantive responses to sensitive questions. The data analyzed were from 39 self- administered questions concerning sexual attitudes and behaviors in the 2002 Taiwan Social Change Survey for module Family and Changing Gender Role. Poisson Regression in 2-level Hierarchical Linear Model was employed to enhance the accuracy of the analysis of the accumulation of don't know and refusal responses. The results showed that respondent cooperation significantly decreased the number of both don't know and refusal replies. The decrease was not conditioned by any kind of social distance. Age and education distances have respectively negative and positive effect on the number of don't know and refusal answers. The married-married interview produced more don't know and refusal than other paired interview types. The larger the ethnicity distance is, the more refusal appears. The substantial findings imply that the effects of social-distance and rapport (respondent cooperation) on the number of item nonresponses deserve more attention in research on survey methodology. The divergent findings on gender-distance effect and marital-status effect, however, call for replication studies in the future.