Do I need to consider differences in response rates or sample demographics when examining trends across HINTS years?
The unweighted demographic distributions of the sample do change across years. The primary reasons for this are the decline in response rates and the deterioration of the random-digit-dial (RDD) sample frame. Between 2003 and 2005 the response rate dropped from 33% to 20%. Between 2005 and 2007 the response rate increased slightly (20% To 24% for the RDD sample). The drop between 2003 and 2005 is generally attributed to the growing problems with getting cooperation from the general public for RDD surveys. The proportion of those who do not have access to a landline telephone also went up during this time period. This group is disproportionately related to younger persons. This generally reduced the number of younger people in the sample over the later HINTS telephone administrations. The weights for each year will distribute the samples to reflect the demographic distribution of adults living in the United States for that particular year. Using the weighted estimates, therefore, would
