survey response rate
the share of people invited to a survey who actually completed it. As it falls, the risk grows that responders differ from non-responders in ways that bend the results — nonresponse bias.
a survey with an 8% response rate can still be useful. it cannot be read the same way as one with 70%. the number tells you how much self-selection could be doing the work.
why it matters for trends
The danger is sharpest in trend data. If a mental-health survey's response rate slides from 23% to 8% over a decade while its headline numbers rise, part of the rise may be composition: people engaged with mental health plausibly answer mental-health surveys at higher rates. The Healthy Minds college survey on this site is the working example — its medication-use trend is real data, published annually, and we chart it with exactly this caveat, because the reports themselves publish none.
what weighting can and cannot fix
Surveys adjust for known differences between responders and the population — age, sex, school size. Weighting can only fix what is measured: if the unmeasured trait "willing to answer" correlates with the outcome, no weight recovers it. This is why federal surveys with interviewer contact and higher response rates (NHIS, NHANES) anchor this site's population numbers, with web panels labeled as the weaker instrument.
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questions
is there a minimum acceptable response rate?
No bright line — what matters is whether non-responders plausibly differ on the thing being measured. An 8% response on a mental-health survey warrants more caution than 8% on a consumer-preference poll, because the topic itself drives who answers.
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more from the glossary
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