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645 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 6 (2013)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0645 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION New Challenges to Social Measurement By DOUGLAS S. MASSEY and ROGER TOURANGEAU Surveys are the principal source of data not only for social science, but for consumer research, political poll- ing, and federal statistics. In response to social and technological trends, rates of survey nonresponse have risen markedly in recent years, prompting observers to worry about the continued validity of surveys as a tool for data gathering. This introductory article sets the stage for the comprehensive review that follows of the causes and consequences of nonresponse for survey data and the approaches that have been developed to address it. Keywords: surveys; nonresponse; bias; estimation; item nonresponse; survey nonresponse; response rate Americans frequently encounter the term survey in the mass media-whenever an author, reporter, commentator, or blogger makes reference to a poll or survey of some group of people, such as registered voters, likely consumers, or television viewers. Newspaper stories, magazine articles, radio programs, television broadcasts, and Internet blogs are filled with data derived from surveys of one sort or another. Ultimately, a survey is nothing more than a set of questions asked of some set of respondents drawn from a larger Douglas S. Massey is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the president of the American Academy qf Political and Social Science. He is a member of the National Academy qf Sciences, the American Academy qf Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Roger Tourangeau is a vice president at Westat. Before coming to Westat, he was a research professor at the University qf Michigan's Survey Research Center and the dire ctorof the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University qf Maryland. He has been a survey researcher for more than 30 years. NOTE: The authors thank the Russell Sage Foundation and the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council for their generous support in sponsoring the workshop at which the articles in this volume were originally presented. DOI: 10.1177/0002716212463314 ANNALS, AAPSS, 645, January 2013 6