Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics 1995

The goal was to develop a sample of households (excluding institutionalized people) that would meet accepted scientific standards of a true probability sample to the greatest extent possible, while taking into account the severe operational constraints of Goskomstat. With the advice of William Kalsbeek [a sampling expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH)] and later with help from Leslie Kish, the project developed a replicated three-stratified cluster sample of residential addresses, excluding military, penal, and other institutionalized populations. Replication was designated for Stage 1 of sampling so that the number of primary sampling units (PSUs) could be kept manageable, with the understanding that later they would be expanded. The sample size of each replicate was set at 20 PSUs. The quality of this sample was statistically analyzed.

Sample attrition due to nonresponse cannot be avoided. Table 1 summarizes RLMS Round V interview completion rates for the original sample of dwelling units in the eight regions that comprise the survey population. These are not response rates; each denominator includes dwelling units that were vacant or uninhabitable at the time of the Round V interviews. Overall, interviews were completed in 84.3% of the original national probability sample of n=4718 dwelling units.

Interview completion rates outside St. Petersburg, Moscow City, and Moscow Oblast range from 84.8% in the combined Central/Central Black Earth region to 92.6% in Western Siberia. Rates in the highly urban Moscow/St. Petersburg region are much lower. In part, these rates may reflect higher vacancy rates in metropolitan areas, but clearly lower household contact and response rates also come into play. Lower rates in Moscow and St. Petersburg were anticipated at the design stage, and initial allocations to these strata were increased to offset expected losses from refusal and noncontact. This is one form of what we might call "designing for nonresponse." The over-sampling strategy is beneficial in that it means reduced variability in the final analysis weights (due to the offset in the product of higher sample selection probability and lower response propensity); however, over-sampling eliminates the potential for bias only if attrition is occurring at random within the final weighting adjustment cells.

If independent samples were developed for each round of the repeated cross-section design, attrition in one round would be independent of (although possibly similar in nature to) that in other rounds. However, since the RLMS uses a static sample of dwellings across multiple rounds, the impact of nonresponse and attrition is the net effect of several factors. Round V attrition bias can arise only from differential nonresponse and noncontact for subclasses of households that occupy the original sample of dwelling units. The potential for nonresponse bias in cross-sectional analysis or contrasts involving the Rounds VI and VII data is a complex function of:
(1) initial nonresponse in Round V;
(2) net difference in characteristics of households and individuals who move out of or into sample dwellings;
(3) nonresponse on the part of old households continuing to reside in sample dwelling units; and
(4) nonresponse on the part of new households currently living in sample dwelling units.

Time did not permit analysis of each of these factors. Instead, I performed several simple analyses of the net effect of household turnover and nonresponse on the marginal sample distributions (unweighted) of population characteristics that should not change significantly over time.

The general observation is that the combined influence of nonresponse attrition and household turnover does not seriously distort the geographic distribution of the sample or its size or household-head characteristics. The distributions for the geographic variables indicate that, between Round V and Round VII, there is a decline in the nominal representation of households in the Moscow/St. Petersburg region, reflected in a decline in the proportion of sample households from the urban domain. Households with a male head aged 18-59 may be subject to slightly higher than average attrition/net loss in replacement. If we focus only on these characteristics, the problem is not serious.

In summary, the net effect of nonresponse attrition and change in dwelling unit occupants across rounds on the marginal characteristics of the observed cross-sectional samples is modest. Loss in nominal "sample share" between Rounds V and VII is greatest for residents of Moscow/St. Petersburg--a loss in representation that is readily corrected with the combined sample selection/nonresponse adjustment factors that have been computed for each round. It is important to note that the simple analysis described here cannot demonstrate that no uncorrected attrition bias remains. The potential for uncorrected nonresponse bias can be specific to the dependent variable under study. Nevertheless, it appears that, with the nonresponse and post-stratification adjustments developed by Michael Swafford, the potential for serious attrition bias in repeated cross-section analysis is small.