We compare various imputation methods for compensating wave nonresponse that are commonly adopted in many panel surveys. Unlike the cross-sectional survey, the panel survey is involved a time-effect in nonresponse in a sense that nonresponse may happe...
We compare various imputation methods for compensating wave nonresponse that are commonly adopted in many panel surveys. Unlike the cross-sectional survey, the panel survey is involved a time-effect in nonresponse in a sense that nonresponse may happen for some but not all waves. Thus, responses in neighboring waves can be used as powerful predictors for imputing wave nonresponse such as in longitudinal regression imputation, carry-over imputation, nearest neighborhood regression imputation and row-column imputation method. For comparison, we carry out a simulation study on a few income data from the Korean Welfare Panel Study based on two performance criteria: predictive accuracy and estimation accuracy. Our simulation shows that the ratio and row-column imputation methods are much more effective in terms of both criteria. Regression, longitudinal regression and carry-over imputation methods performed better in predictive accuracy, but less in estimation accuracy. On the other hand, nearest neighborhood, nearest neighbor regression and hot-deck imputation show higher performance in estimation accuracy but lower predictive accuracy. Finally, the mean imputation shows much lower performance in both criteria.