Total Survey Error (TSE) Toolbox
Error that occurs when some members of the target population have zero chance of being selected because they’re not in the sampling frame.
What is coverage error?
The outcome rate defined as the number of eligible sample units that cooperate in a survey, historically treated as central to survey research.
What is the response rate?
Survey mode where an interviewer administers the questionnaire by phone.
What is Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing or CATI?
Data about the process of collecting survey responses (e.g., timestamps, keystrokes, call records), not the substantive answers themselves.
What is paradata?
SAPOR is one of this many officially recognized regional chapters of AAPOR.
What are seven regional chapters?
Error introduced when the answers given differ from the “true” values because of question wording, recall problems, or social desirability.
What is measurement error?
This AAPOR publication standardized “Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys.”
What is the AAPOR Standard Definitions?
Survey mode where respondents complete the instrument online without an interviewer.
What is web/self-administered (sometimes referred to as Computer Assisted Web Interviewing or CAWI)?
A common paradata flag for “too fast to be thoughtful,” often computed as survey ________.
What is completion time (or speeding)?
The peer‑reviewed journal that became AAPOR’s official publication in 1948.
What is Public Opinion Quarterly?
Error that results purely from observing a sample rather than the full population, even if everything else is perfect.
What is sampling error?
Outcome rate that focuses on participation among those you actually contacted, not the whole sample.
What is the cooperation rate?
Survey mode where an interviewer administers the survey in person using a computer.
What is a Computer Assisted Personal Interview or CAPI?
In interviewer-administered surveys, monitoring audio/behavior to ensure protocols are followed is this kind of activity.
What is quality monitoring (or interviewer monitoring)?
This AAPOR initiative encourages organizations to fully disclose survey methodology when reporting results, without judging survey quality.
What is the AAPOR Transparency Initiative?
In TSE terms, the “invisible” error that happens when the recorded value is wrong due to coding, data entry, editing, or file merges.
What is processing error?
A rate that captures the share of sampled cases that actively refuse or break off.
What is the refusal rate?
This general phenomenon occurs when answers differ because the mode changes how people interpret questions or how willing they are to disclose.
What are mode effects?
When fieldwork is adjusted in real time (e.g., reallocating effort to underrepresented groups) using paradata and interim metrics, that approach is called this.
What is responsive design (or adaptive design)?
SAPOR is the regional chapter of AAPOR that serves U.S. states spanning roughly from Texas to this Atlantic state.
What is Virginia?
Error that occurs when some sampled units cannot be contacted, refuse, or otherwise don’t provide data.
What is nonresponse error?
In AAPOR language, cases whose eligibility is not known (e.g., you never determine if the unit is eligible) fall into this bucket.
What is unknown eligibility?
A key advantage of self-administered web surveys for sensitive topics: increased perceived privacy reduces this.
What is social desirability bias?
The point at which a respondent starts a survey but exits before completing it.
What is breakoff?
The number of states that are included in the SAPOR region?
What is 13?