Social Trust and its Impact on Survey Response Rates

Increasing nonresponse in household surveys in recent years has been a matter ofconcern, especially regarding the quality of information produced from large scalesurveys with gradually decreasing response rates. In this research we explore ifthere is any empirical relationship between social trust, both interpersonal and institutional,and the survey response rates over time. We use social trust items measuredin General Social Survey (GSS) to answer our research question. Analyzingdata from 13 federally-administered national household surveys over two decadesspanning 2000 to 2022 using state-space models, we found mixed results indicatingthat trust in both government and economic institutions yielded strong associationsbetween response rates and trust. However, we found limited evidence suggestingthat institutional trust bears an association with response rates to surveys relatedto health. Overall our research tries to find the root causes of declining survey responseand motivates the discussion around social trust being a potential driver ofinfluencing an individual’s propensity to respond to surveys.