Survey Recruitment Bias and Estimates of College Student Food Insecurity

Abstract

ABSTRACTHaving valid measures of college student FI is essential for justifying basic-needs services for students. But college student food insecurity (FI) rates vary significantly across institutions, perhaps partially due to differences in non-response bias resulting from participant recruitment strategies. We tested for effects of recruitment method on measured levels of college student FI at three time points (2020, 2021, 2022). Survey response rates varied dramatically across recruitment modalities. Higher FI rates were estimated in low-response-rate survey deliveries. Emailed surveys appear to inflate estimates of student FI. Efforts to increase response rates likely produce more valid estimates of college student FI.KEYWORDS: College food insecuritysample biasresponse biassurvey recruitment AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank the students who participated in this study, the Office of the Dean of Students for authorization to conduct the survey on campus and for funding student and faculty researchers.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis project was funded by the Office of the Dean of Students at the “Main Campus”.