2008 AAPOR Book Award
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The 2008 AAPOR Book Award goes to Robert M. Groves and Mick P. Couper
for Nonresponse in Household Interview Surveys. Their book is
being honored for a lasting influence on the science of survey
research. Published a decade ago in 1998, it arrived at a time
when pollsters and other researchers were struggling with plummeting
rates of response to surveys, from both those who could not be reached
and those who were unwilling to participate. This raised serious
questions about the generalizability—and ultimately, the
usefulness—of data from household surveys. (Go here to watch Dr. Groves discuss the
book with Mark Blumenthal, Pollster.com.)
The volume led the field to a more critical and
comprehensive examination of survey participation. Based on a thorough
[CP1] theory-based and interdisciplinary approach, the book assembled
original data about nonresponse on a massive scale and breadth,
including findings from a collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of the
Census. It has shaped how survey methodologists, analysts and
practitioners think about nonresponse, guiding much subsequent research,
including the notion that nonresponse is a stochastic, rather than a
fixed, property of individual respondents.
Dr. Groves is the Director of the University of Michigan Survey Research
Center and a Research Professor at the Joint Program in Survey
Methodology, a consortium of the University of Maryland, the University
of Michigan, and Westat. He is also a Professor of Sociology at
the University of Michigan. He was Associate Director of the U.S.
Census Bureau from 1990-1992, on loan from the University of
Michigan. He is the author of Survey Errors and Survey Costs
(Wiley, 1989), and co-author of Surveys by Telephone (Academic Press,
1979); Nonresponse in Household Interview Surveys (Wiley, 1998): chief
editor of Telephone Survey Methodology (Wiley, 1988), and co-editor of
Measurement Errors in Surveys (Wiley, 1991), as well as many articles in
survey and statistical methodology.
Contact information: Mick
Couper
Robert Groves
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