Best Practice Recommendations for Conducting Key Driver Analyses

In their critical review of survey key driver analyses (SKDA), Cucina, Walmsley, Gast, Martin, and Curtin (2017) contend that methodological issues limit the usefulness of SKDA and recommend that survey providers stop conducting SKDA until these issues can be overcome. I contend that many of these methodological issues are either overstated or able to be addressed through the proper application of the technique by a competent professional. In this commentary, I make recommendations for how SKDA should be applied so that methodological issues are addressed and the value of SKDA is maximized. Many of these recommendations were made in Lundby and Johnson (2006), who were cited by Cucina et al. but did not have much impact on their focal article.