Beyond not having enough time for them, not caring enough about their outcomes, or being just plain annoyed by them, mark "genetic disposition" as another reason to not respond to surveys according to research out of North Carolina State University. In a forthcoming Journal of Organizational Behavior paper, NCSU's Lori Foster Thompson and her colleagues at Arizona State University and the National University of Singapore suggest there are "genetic underpinnings of survey response," which they've determined by investigating 558 male and 500 female twin pairs — both fraternal and identical — from the Minnesota Twin Registry. Study participants were asked to complete and return paper-and-pencil surveys of "leadership activities." By combining quantitative genetics and environmental effects, Thompson et al. found that "genetic influences explained 45 percent of the variance in survey response behavior for both women and men, with little shared environmental effects." The authors add that they obtained similar results even when they "partialled out potential confounds including twin closeness, age, and education" from the data. According to the NCSU release, this study serves as a first step towards discovering "why or how genetics affect people’s predisposition to take surveys," and whether "the linkage between genetics and survey response explained by personality ... or something else entirely," Thompson said.
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