In this paper we evaluate the quality of survey data collected by the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project by investigating four potential sources of bias: sample representativeness, interviewer effects, response unreliability, and sample attrition. We discuss the results of our analysis and implications of our findings for the collection of data in similar contexts.

520 Freely available online open Access bJr bJr elimination of bias is a core element of high quality clinical trials. 1 In addition to selection, detection, attrition, reporting and spectrum bias, 2 a further type of bias has been reported, known as 'design bias'. 3 this occurs before the trial is begun and is inconsistent with the principle of 'equipoise' and has relevance for surgical trials...

The many-body dynamics exhibited by living objects include group formation within a population and the nonequilibrium process of attrition between two opposing populations due to competition or conflict. We show analytically and numerically that the combination of these two dynamical processes generates an attrition duration T whose nonlinear dependence on population asymmetry x is in stark con...

Dropout from epilepsy programmes is a serious problem in developing countries and has not been systematically studied before. We set up a community-based programme for children with epilepsy in rural India. The aim of this study was to assess reasons for dropout. We assessed medical and sociodemographic variables for their effect on dropout at 12 months using an unmatched case-control design on...

BACKGROUND Military training represents a significant physical challenge. Low fitness levels are strongly associated with an increased risk of injury and training attrition. To increase pass rates for Royal Navy (RN) Phase I training, a pre-joining fitness test (PJFT) was introduced (2.4 km treadmill best effort run). The PJFT was designed to identify candidates with poor levels of aerobic fitn...

Ways to Guarantee Minority Faculty Will Quit Academic Medicine To the Editor: In the recent article “Hiring wisdom: Top 10 ways to guarantee your best people will quit,” Kleiman discusses major factors leading to employee attrition in business. As we reflected on the academic medical jobs we have had, as well as our research on underrepresented minorities in academic medicine, a striking simila...

This paper uses an unbalanced panel dataset to evaluate how repeated job search services (JSS) and personal characteristics affect the employment rate of the prime-age female welfare recipients in the State of Washington. We propose a transition probability model to take into account issues of sample attrition, sample refreshment and duration dependence. We also generalize Honoré and Kyriazidou...

Because of the current high proportion of novice high-school teachers, many students' mastery of science and mathematics depends on the effectiveness of early-career teachers. In this study, which used value-added models to analyze high-school teachers' effectiveness in raising test scores on 1.05 million end-of-course exams, we found that the effectiveness of high-school science and mathematic...

In designing longitudinal studies, researchers must determine the number of subjects to randomize based on the power to detect a clinically meaningful treatment difference and a proposed analysis plan. In this paper, we present formulas for sample size estimation and an assessment of statistical power for a two-treatment repeated measures design allowing for subject attrition. These formulas ca...

"This paper will investigate the issue of weighting for panel attrition in event-history models by comparing alternative treatments of sampling weights in a divorce model for members of the 1986 [U.S.] Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Three distinct weighting procedures are compared. These are based on (1) the initial selection probability weights; (2) the 1986 SIPP panel weig...