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The Impact of Respondent and Interviewer Characteristics on the Number of “No Opinion” Answers

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Abstract

In this article we analyse the number of “no opinion” answers to attitude items. We argue that that number can be considered as a count variable that should be analysed using Poisson regression or negative binomial regression. Since we're interested in the effect of both respondent and interviewer characteristics on the number of “no opinion”'s we use multilevel analysis that takes into account the hierarchical structure of the data. As a consequence multilevel Poisson regression and multilevel negative binomial regression are applied. Our analysis shows that answering “no opinion” is related to some sociodemographic respondent characteristics. In addition we find a significant interviewer effect, but we are not able to explain that effect in terms of interviewer variables.

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Pickery, J., Loosveldt, G. The Impact of Respondent and Interviewer Characteristics on the Number of “No Opinion” Answers. Quality & Quantity 32, 31–45 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004268427793

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004268427793

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