Can chemists learn anything from social scientists?

PROF 8

Yun K. Kim, Assistant Vice President of Research and Evaluation, Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 523, Chicago, IL 60605
The ACS has been very successful in their salary and employment surveys over the years. A lot of information has been obtained that is most useful to the Chemistry enterprise. A notable feature of ACS surveys is the high response rate. However, in many other national surveys, the response rate has been declining. This talk will focus on many lessons (and continuing struggles) the social science field has learned over the last few decades on survey non-response rate, and share several practical methods that the organizers of the ChemCensus have ascertained to reduce the non-response rate. Included in the talk are the definitions of non-response rate, the relationship of non-response rate to total survey error, and effective non-response rate reduction methods. The relevance of these methods to ACS and to chemistry enterprise will be illustrated.