Hans Waege

Diversity in social support by role relations: A typology ☆

Abstract Social support is fundamental for social integration and emotional well-being. One aspect of social support that is often the focus of attention is the size of a persons support network. However, additional complex measures of social support are necessary to capture qualitative aspects of support networks, such as the diversity in types of support available from specific types of alters. This paper presents a simple way to acquire this comprehensive information and a condensed way to represent the complexity of a persons support network so this information can easily be included in classic survey analyses. Log-linear latent class analysis is used to construct a typology of ego-centric support networks showing the types of support respondents can expect from alters with a specific role. Depending on the role relation for the five support items, this diversity can adequately be represented by distinguishing 2–4 types of respondents. For the role relation friends, we can differentiate between respondents who expect only companionship from their friends, those expecting emotional support as well as companionship, and respondents expecting no social support at all from their friends. For immediate kin, we find those with only emotional support, those with emotional and instrumental support, those with all types of support, and finally a group of respondents expecting no support at all from immediate kin. The approach presented in this article enables a more detailed measurement of the dimensions of social support contents by managing to compile the diversity by distinguishing types of respondents. Such typologies can easily be used as explanatory variables in subsequent analyses.

The joint effect of topic interest and follow-up procedures on the response in a mail questionnaire : An empirical test of the leverage-saliency theory in audience research

Leverage-saliency theory provides a seminal basis for research on the differential effects of response-facilitating techniques in surveys. In this article, a quasi-experimental design is applied to analyze the effect of follow-up procedures, taking into account the sample persons’ interest in the survey topic. The authors use multilevel logistic regression to map response on a mail questionnaire in the second step of a two-step data collection procedure. It is found that—after controlling for the effects of sociodemographic and performance-related covariates—the effect of follow-up procedures is larger for those less interested in the survey topic. As such, these findings are an empirical confirmation of the leverage-saliency theory. Some implications for survey research are discussed.

Respondent Related Correlates of Response Behaviour in Audience Research

Audience research by means of surveys has a long tradition, certainly withinarts and humanities oriented research. Yet, due to selective sampling and unitnonresponse it frequently lacks the methodological rigour to make scientificallyvalid statements based on sample estimates. This is one of the first attempts toexplore unit nonresponse in audience research. More specifically, it focuses onthe explanation of nonresponse by the socio-demographic and more topic relatedcharacteristics of a theatre audience. Using a two-step procedure for the on-sitecollection of data, the characteristics of respondents are compared with those ofnonrespondents. In step 1 the composition of the theatre audience is comparedto a proxy of a theatre population benchmark based on a weighted sample of theFlemish population (APS-2000). The validity of this best available method isdiscussed. Step 2 compares respondents with nonrespondents on a micro-level:ignoring unit nonresponse in step 1, we use logistic regression to map selectionin step 2. The chance of cooperating with the survey has been found to increasewith educational attainment and vary according to occupational category. Moreover,involvement with survey topic is confirmed as a strong predictor of survey participation.Gender, age and experience with theatre remain insignificant in predicting responsebehaviour. These findings are compared with the socio-demographic correlates ofresponse behaviour in general populations. Implications for statistically controllingfor nonresponse bias in audience research are discussed. Suggestions for furtherresearch are presented.