Data in this report is drawn from the panel wave conducted March 8 to March 14, 2021. A total of 12,045 panelists responded out of 13,540 who were sampled, for a response rate of 89%. This does not include five panelists who were removed from the data due to extremely high rates of refusal or straightlining. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 4%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 1%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 12,045 respondents is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
The U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File has been estimated to cover as much as 98% of the population, although some studies suggest that the coverage could be in the low 90% range.[1.[1] AAPOR Task Force on Address-based Sampling. 2016. “AAPOR Report: Address-based Sampling.”] The American Trends Panel never uses breakout routers or chains that direct respondents to additional surveys.
The data collection field period for this survey was March 8 to March 14, 2021. Postcard notifications were mailed to all ATP panelists with a known residential address on March 8, 2021.
To ensure high-quality data, the Center’s researchers performed data quality checks to identify any respondents showing clear patterns of satisficing. This includes checking for very high rates of leaving questions blank, as well as always selecting the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, five ATP respondents were removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.