Abstract
Longitudinal survey data can arise in many different settings, e.g., from rotating panel surveys, in cohort studies, and in the context of field experiments that involve economic and social phenomena that change over time. In all of these settings the longitudinal feature implies repeated interviews of respondents from nonstationary populations, and both panel attrition and missing data present special concerns. The issues here are ones involving both design and analysis. Among the design issues in a longitudinal survey is how to achieve a high degree of data continuity by following movers, when the cost of such continuity is high. If the sampling units of interest are groups as opposed to individuals, there is often a critical need for operational definitions of “family” and “household”, because the concepts are dynamic and change over time. Among the analysis issues addressed in the paper are (i) the use of longitudinal vs. cross-sectional methods of imputation and adjustment for missing values, and (ii) the use of weights in longitudinal analyses to adjust for unequal probabilities of selection and nonresponse.
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. SES-8119219 to Carnegie-Mellon University, Grant No. SES-8119138 to the Research Foundation of the State University of New York, and Grant No. BNS-8011494 while the first author was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We have benefitted greatly from comments on earlier versions of this paper by Robert F. Boruch, Daniel Horvitz, Graham Kalton, Robert W. Pearson, and T.M.F. Smith. Numerous people provided references, ideas, and miscellaneous documents and manuscripts. We bear sole responsibility for the way in which the material has been expressed.
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Fienberg, S.E., Tanur, J.M. (1986). The Design and Analysis of Longitudinal Surveys: Controversies and Issues of Cost and Continuity. In: Pearson, R.W., Boruch, R.F. (eds) Survey Research Designs: Towards a Better Understanding of Their Costs and Benefits. Lecture Notes in Statistics, vol 38. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6336-1_4
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