Rising nonresponse rates in social surveys make the issue of nonresponse bias contentious. There are conflicting messages about the importance of high response rates and the hazards of low rates. Some articles (e.g. Groves and Peytcheva, 2008) suggest that the response rate is in general not a good predictor of survey quality. Equally, it is well known that nonresponse may induce bias and increase data collection costs. We go back in the history of the literature of nonresponse and suggest a possible reason to the notion that even a rather small nonresponse rate makes the quality of a survey debatable. We also explore the relationship between nonresponse rate and bias, assuming non‐ignorable nonresponse and focusing on estimates of totals or means. We show that there is a ‘safe area’ enclosed by the response rate on the one hand and the correlation between the response propensity and the study variable on the other hand; in this area, (1) the response rate does not greatly affect the nonresponse bias, and (2) the nonresponse bias is small.

中文翻译：

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尽管存在不可忽视的不响应，但是否存在一个“安全区域”，即不响应率对偏差仅产生适度影响？

社会调查中不断上升的不答复率使不答复偏见问题引起了争议。关于高响应率的重要性和低响应率的危害存在相互矛盾的信息。一些文章（例如 Groves 和 Peytcheva，2008 年）表明，响应率通常不是调查质量的良好预测指标。同样，众所周知，不响应可能会导致偏差并增加数据收集成本。我们回顾了无响应文献的历史，并提出了一个可能的原因，即即使相当小的无响应率也会使调查的质量有争议。我们还探讨了无响应率和偏差之间的关系，假设无响应不可忽略，并关注总数或均值的估计。我们表明，一方面有一个由响应率包围的“安全区域”，另一方面是响应倾向与研究变量之间的相关性；在这方面，（1）响应率对不响应偏差的影响不大，（2）不响应偏差很小。