Investigating the use of nurse paradata in understanding nonresponse to biological data collection

This chapter explores the potential for using nurse visit paradata to address nonresponse to biological data collection. An investigation of the quality of paradata variables collected during the nurse visit phase of the UK Household Longitudinal Study is carried out. Through this analysis, it is determined whether such data can help to predict response across the different stages of biological data collection. This determination will inform the conclusion about whether paradata collected by nurses during biological data collection should be incorporated into nonresponse adjustment procedures, or at least disseminated to data users who can then decide for themselves whether to use these data as control variables in their analysis. The characteristics of the nurses and a selection of paradata variables from each of the stages of biological data collection, as well as the main survey interview, were included in the extended response propensity models.