Analyzing the 2000 National Election Study

In an earlier report, two of us (Bowers and Ensley, 2003, National Election Studies Technical Report, www.umich.edu/~nes) provided a general framework for understanding the particular strategy outlined by Fogarty et al. (in this issue). Fogarty et al.'s strategy is to make the face-to-face variables more like the random digit dial (RDD) telephone variables by trimming the ends in order to reduce the variance of the face-to-face (FTF) variables. Perhaps some scholars will want the FTF variables to look like the RDD variables, but that would be a fix for a specific research question. Given the significant differences in the representativeness of the samples, the processes of survey nonresponse, and the quality and character of the responses between data taken from a National Area Probability sample in person and data taken from an RDD telephone sample, research questions involving comparisons with other years in the 50-year time series will require different remedies.