BACKGROUND FACTORS PREDICTING NONRESPONSE IN A HEALTH SURVEY OF NORTHERN FINNISH YOUNG MEN

The study addresses the characteristics potentially predictive of non- response to a health survey among 2500 24-year-old males, on whom a no table amount of other data was available. The overall non-response rat e was 40%, part of which was due to the unreachability of some subject s: 4% of the questionnaires were returned because of unknown addresses . Some (n = 39) of the respondents had concealed the identification nu mber in the questionnaire, which made it impossible to link these data to those collected before in their cases. We were therefore able to u se effectively the data on 1450 (58%) responding subjects in this pape r. Failure to respond was more common among the subjects who had lived in towns in their youth, had not grown up in a complete family, whose socioeconomic status of the family was unknown, and whose mother was young and had a low educational level. Poorer-than-average school perf ormance at elementary school was also predictive of a high nonresponse rate. Non-response was heavily associated with previous non-response to a health inquiry. Some aspects of health and behaviour in adolescen se, such as smoking at the age of 14, were related to non-response to this survey, too. The non-response was higher than average among those subjects who had suffered from mental disorders (serious mental disor ders, less serious mental disorders such as neurotic disorders, adjust ment reactions, and psychosomatic disorders and mental retardation). T he young men who were employed, were students or were doing military s ervice at the age 24 responded better than those who were unemployed o r at disability pension.