Comparison of imputation methods for item nonresponses in a panel study

Abstract

When conducting a survey, item nonresponse occurs if the respondent does not respond to some items. Since analysis based only on completely observed data may cause biased results, imputation is often conducted to analyze data in its complete form. The panel study is a survey method that examines changes of responses over time. In panel studies, there has been a preference for using information from response values of previous waves when the imputation of item nonresponses is performed; however, limited research has been conducted to support this preference. Therefore, this study compares the performance of imputation methods according to whether or not information from previous waves is utilized in the panel study. Among imputation methods that utilize information from previous responses, we consider ratio imputation, imputation based on the linear mixed model, and imputation based on the Bayesian linear mixed model approach. We compare the results from these methods against the results of methods that do not use information from previous responses, such as mean imputation and hot deck imputation. Simulation results show that imputation based on the Bayesian linear mixed model performs best and yields small biases and high coverage rates of the 95% confidence interval even at higher nonresponse rates.