How may nonresponse affect findings in organizational surveys? The tendency-to-the-positive effect

Building on previous findings that those who hold negative attitudes toward the organization have a relatively low likelihood to participate in organizational surveys, the authors examined the impact of nonresponse on the findings of organizational surveys. An artificial example showed that if the likelihood to respond depends on one's standing on response-related variables, the scores on these latter variables will differ from those for the population, whereas between-organization differences in these variables will be underestimated. Consistent with earlier findings, our survey among employees of 96 Dutch home care organizations revealed that employees of high-response organizations reported more positive attitudes toward their work and organization than others. This underlines the importance of obtaining high response rates in organizational studies.