Issues Facing the Field: Alternative Practical Measures of Representativeness of Survey Respondent Pools

that nonresponse rates are poor indicators of nonresponse error of survey estimates. However, the field (and the public at large) has been taught to use response rates as quality indicators. Indeed, with the exception of the sample size, the response rate is probably commonly held to be the most important criterion of survey quality. As of yet, however, there is no alternative indicator of relevance to nonresponse error that has been proposed.