Item non response in surveys among adolescents in Iceland

• Main Authors: Haraldsson, Hans, Kjartanasdóttir, Ingibjörg
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2022
• Subjects: item non response; HBSC; ESPAD; PISA; gagnagöt; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/index.php/netla/article/view/3473

Several school-based surveys among Icelandic adolescents are conducted regularly. The topics of these surveys include mental and physical well-being, substance use, academic work, school environment, leisure and sports activities, media and internet use and family environment. Results from these surveys play a significant role in the making of educational and youth policies in Iceland.The questionnaires used in these surveys are quite long and sometimes involve demanding response tasks. As a result, it is quite possible that item missing data might be missing systematically, leading to substantially biased findings, especially if statistical analyses that adjust for missingness are not used.In the present study we look at the proportion of item missing data in three large surveys among Icelandic adolescents, European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC), and the student questionnaire from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Analyses of the ESPAD data were restricted to respondents that reported their gender and we used the raw data as it appears before logical substitution and the removal of extreme respondents (n=2609). Analyses of the HBSC data were restricted to respondents that reported their class and their gender as either male or female (n=6946). Analyses of the PISA student questionnaire were restricted to those students who did not receive the simplified une heure test booklet (n=3230). Proportions of missing data were analysed graphically, both by item location and question format, using a novel type of diagnostic plots.We examined two types of missing data. We looked at breakoff rates, where participants completely drop out of the survey and stop responding altogether. Secondly, we examined the item specific non response rates, where participants skip items but respond to items that appear later.All three surveys had a substantial proportion of item missing data but this proportion varies greatly by item ...