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Are we measuring what we want to measure?

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Author Info
Simona Bignami-Van Assche (University of Pennsylvania)
Abstract

The social context of survey interviews is likely to be important in survey measurement in developing countries, where respondents expect to benefit from participation. In the recent literature on survey measurement, however, there are few attempts to analyze the impact of the respondents’ social context on response error, and they tend to be limited to developed countries. This paper follows the narrow path traced by these attempts. The opportunity for this study is offered by a set of 134 unplanned re-interviews collected during the fieldwork operations of a household panel survey in rural Malawi. Personal benefit was the main reason some respondents were willing to be re-interviewed, since the survey compensated them with an additional gift for the second interview. By comparing the answers to the first and second interview given by the re-interviewed respondents, this paper therefore assesses how the search for personal benefit (which captures some aspects of the respondents’ social context) biased the results.

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Publisher Info
Article provided by Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany in its journal Demographic Research Special Collections.

Volume (Year): 1 (2003)
Issue (Month): 3 (September)
Pages: 77-108
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Handle: RePEc:dem:drspec:v:1:y:2003:i:3

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Related research
Keywords: AIDS/HIV; consistency; Malawi; response error; social interaction; survey measurement; surveys;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Sean Becketti & William Gould & Lee Lillard & Finis Welch, 1985. "The Panel Study of Income Dynamics After Fourteen Years: An Evaluation," UCLA Economics Working Papers 361, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Becketti, Sean, et al, 1988. "The Panel Study of Income Dynamics after Fourteen Years: An Evaluatio n," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 472-92, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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This page was last updated on 2009-12-26.


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