Ethnic minorities and non-response: Evidence from the Millennium Cohort and lessons for Understanding Society

The next seminar in the CLS/UK Longitudinal Studies Centre Joint Methods Seminar Series is on Wednesday, April 29, at 1pm at the University of Essex. It will feature two short talks on ethnic minorities and non-response by by Professor Shirley Dex of CLS and Dr Jon Burton of the Institute of Social and Economic Research.

The next seminar in the CLS/UK Longitudinal Studies Centre Joint Methods Seminar Series is on Wednesday, April 29, at 1pm at the University of Essex. This seminar will feature two short talks on ethnic minorities and non-response by Professor Shirley Dex of CLS and Dr Jon Burton of the Institute of Social and Economic Research. See below for further details.

Ethnic minorities and non-response in the Millennium Cohort Study

Presented by Shirley Dex

Attrition is one of the perennial worries in conducting prospective longitudinal surveys. Knowledge has advanced over time about the characteristics of those respondents who are more or less likely to continue to participate. In relation to ethnicity, a number of US longitudinal studies have shown that black respondents usually suffer higher attrition rates than white respondents, but if, in addition, they are young black men, the rates are dangerously high and threaten to make analyses of this group unviable. Less is known about survey non-response for minority ethnic groups in the UK and especially about attrition for specific minorities in longitudinal surveys.

Analyses of non-response helps to uncover biases in longitudinal data, and can provide the necessary information to produce non-response weights, but potentially can also offer advice on future fieldwork strategies that are likely to help to minimise attrition. This paper sets out to analyse the non-response of mothers who took part in Sweep 1 of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) focusing on differences in response by ethnicity. The main aim is to learn lessons that may help future field-work practice for longitudinal studies including significant minority ethnic samples.

Design decision on Understanding Society: Interviewing in a language other than English

Presented by Jonathan Burton

This presentation briefly reviews the procedures used in sample surveys in the UK to interview members who speak a language other than English. This review informs the decisions over (i) what languages should Understanding Society cater for and (ii) the process by which the survey is translated.

Venue Large Seminar Room (2N2.4.16), Institute for Social & Economic Research

Further information is available from:
http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/events/seminars/jess/2009-04-29