The Nonresponse Project

In 2026, I was awarded an NFKIH Starting Grant (STARTING-25) for a three-year research project, titled: Towards a Better Understanding of Survey Participation and Nonresponse.

The project aims to identify the key psychological, social, and structural factors shaping participation decisions and refusal, in order to generate evidence that can support more effective strategies to reduce nonresponse. Survey research is essential to democratic public life and scientific inquiry, yet declining response rates increasingly threaten data quality, while the drivers of survey participation and refusal remain insufficiently understood, particularly in Hungary.

Our current plans include contributing to the theory of nonresponse by synthesizing currently fragmented approaches; conducting a qualitative study with interviewers; writing a systematic review and meta-analysis on the use of incentives in survey research; analyzing macro-level trends in nonresponse using large-scale cross-national data such as the European Social Survey; and studying social media narratives about polls during the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections using Natural Language Processing methods. These steps will help ground the main stage of the project: large-scale quantitative experiments designed to manipulate barriers to survey participation, including field and conjoint experiments.

First results are coming soon!