Abstract

Several imputation methods have been developed for imputing missing responses.
Often it is not clear which imputation method is "best" for a particular assumption. In
choosing an imputation method, one should consider several factors, including the types
of estimates that will generated, the partial nonresponse rates, the nature of nonresponse,
and the availability of the auxiliary data that are highly correlated with characteristic of
interest or with the response propensity.

This study compared the effectiveness of four imputation procedures namely the
overall mean imputation, hot deck imputation, deterministic and stochastic regression
imputation using the first visit variable to be its auxiliary variable. A total of 4130 cases
were simulated in the study. Values for both variables were set to nonresponse to satisfy
the assumption of partial nonresponse. The results of the study provide some support for
the following conclusions: (a) for this data, the hot deck imputation and overall mean
imputation method are not appropriate for handling nonresponse data; (b) when
predicting an actual value from the set of nonresponse data, the regression model must
have a minimum coefficient of determination of 80% for better prediction of the
observations; and (c) the imputation classes must be homogeneous to produce less biased
estimates.