Noncontact Rate

The noncontact rate for a survey measures the proportion of all sampled cases that are never contacted despite the various efforts that the researchers may set in motion to make contact. By default, if a sampled case is never contacted, then no original data for the survey can be gathered from it, other than observations an in-person interviewer might make of the housing structure or neighborhood. For surveys in which the initial sampling unit is a household or business and then there is a respondent sampled within that unit, a noncontact rate can be calculated both at the unit level and at the within-unit (respondent) level. In theory, a noncontact rate of zero (0.0) means that every eligible sampled case was contacted, whereas a noncontact ...