The impact of non-response bias due to sampling in public health studies: A comparison of voluntary versus mandatory recruitment in a Dutch national survey on adolescent health

This is one of first studies to provide strong evidence that voluntary recruitment may lead to a strong non-response bias in health-related prevalence estimates in adolescents, as compared to mandatory recruitment. The resulting underestimation in prevalence of health behaviours and well-being measures appeared large, up to a four-fold lower proportion for self-reported alcohol consumption. Correlations between variables, though, appeared to be insensitive to sampling bias.