ArticleMedical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making2018
Reducing "I Don't Know" Responses and Missing Survey Data: Implications for Measurement.
Article in Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Advance Care Planning Among People With Dementia in the Netherlands: Insights From an Exploratory Survey of Health Care Professional Perspectives.Scandinavian journal of caring sciences · 2026Article
- Cross-border vaccination behaviour of residents living in a European Union border region: a cross-sectional survey study.BMC global and public health · 2026Article
- Multi-cohort evaluation of "Don't know" responders to self-report oral health questions: Implications for etiologic research.Journal of periodontology · 2026Observational
- Development and initial validation of the health-related quality of life pictorial inventory for children (HEALTH-PIC).Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- I don't know-responses in the international trauma questionnaire caregiver-version: caregivers' knowledge about children's mental health.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Medical Professionals and Pharmacological Intervention for the Treatment of Insomnia: A Cross-Sectional Study.Sleep science (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2025Article
- Article
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- Developing the engage for equity institutional multi-sector survey: Assessing academic institutional culture and climate for community-based participatory research (CBPR).Journal of clinical and translational science · 2025Article
- Factors associated with knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding antiviral medications for COVID-19 among US adults.PloS one · 2025Article
- Exploring the general acceptance factor for shared automated vehicles: the impact of personality traits and experimentally altered information.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Development of a human-analogue, 3-symptom domain Dog ADHD and Functionality Rating Scale (DAFRS).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Person-centered abortion care in public health facilities across four regions of Ethiopia: a cross-sectional quantitative study of client experiences.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2024Article
- Health professionals' perceptions of patient safety competencies: psychometric properties of the French version of the H-PEPSS in France and Switzerland.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- Associations between Birth Weight and Adult Sleep Characteristics: A Cross-Sectional Analysis from the UAEHFS.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Hierarchical Bayesian non-response models for error rates in forensic black-box studies.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
background"I don't know" (DK) responses are common in health behavior research. Yet analytic approaches to managing DK responses may undermine survey validity and researchers' ability to interpret findings.
objectiveCompare the usefulness of a methodological strategy for reducing DK responses to 3 analytic approaches: 1) excluding DKs as missing data, 2) recoding them to the neutral point of the response scale, and 3) recoding DKs with the mean.
methodsWe used a 4-group design to compare a methodological strategy, which encourages use of the response scale after an initial DK response, to 3 methods of analytically treating DK responses. We examined 1) whether this methodological strategy reduced the frequency of DK responses, and 2) how the methodological strategy compared to common analytic treatments in terms of factor structure and strength of correlations between measures of constructs.
resultsThe prompt reduced DK response frequency (55.7% of 164 unprompted participants vs. 19.6% of 102 prompted participants). Factorial invariance analyses suggested equivalence in factor loadings for all constructs throughout the groups. Compared to excluding DKs, recoding strategies and use of the prompt improved the strength of correlations between constructs, with the prompt resulting in the strongest correlations (.589 for benefits and intentions, .446 for perceived susceptibility and intentions, and .329 for benefits and perceived susceptibility). LIMITATIONS: This study was not designed a priori to test methods for addressing DK responses. Our analysis was limited to an interviewer-administered survey, and interviewers did not probe about reasons for DK responses.
conclusionFindings suggest that use of a prompt to reduce DK responses is preferable to analytic approaches to treating DK responses. Use of such prompts may improve the validity of health behavior survey research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.