The impact of privacy and confidentiality concerns on survey participation: The case of the 1990 census. Public Opinion Quarterly

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between con-cerns about confidentiality and privacy, on the one hand, and mail returns to the 1990 census, on the other. Such concerns significantly affect mail returns, even when demographic vari-ables known to be related to both concerns and survey participa-tion are controlled. However, their impact is not very large, and the effects of confidentiality and privacy concerns vary for black and white respondents