Respondent mental health, mental disorders and survey interview out comes

Francisco Perales*, Bernard Baffour

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    16 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Poor mental health and mental disorders are amongst the largest causes of disease burden across the globe, and in developed countries mental illness is on the rise. Studies of the predictors and consequences of ill mental health and mental disorders often rely on surveys. However, there is very little evidence of whether or not there are differences in the ways in which individuals with good and poor mental health and with and without mental disorders engage with the survey interview process, and on their subsequent survey interview outcomes. We examine the associations between respondent mental health, mental disorders and survey interview outcomes using 14 years (2001–2014) of annual, nationally-representative, Australian panel data (n ≈ 200, 000) and state-of-the-art multilevel regression models. We find that individuals with poorer mental health and mental disorders are generally more likely than individuals with better mental health and without mental disorders to be deemed by interviewers as being suspicious of the study, experiencing issues understanding survey questions, and being uncooperative. We also find that these individuals are comparatively more likely to experience panel attrition, complete interviews featuring higher item-level missing data, and fail to complete/return self-complete questionnaires. While the magnitude of these effects is moderate, our findings suggest that data collectors, researchers and policymakers need to remain cognizant of potential issues emerging from differences in the ways in which individuals with poorer and better mental health and without and without mental disorders engage in social surveys.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)161-176
    Number of pages16
    JournalSurvey Research Methods
    Volume12
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018

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