IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/offsta/v37y2021i1p53-69n10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Panel Conditioning in the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Eckman Stephanie

    (RTI International, Statistical Methods, 701 13th St NW, Suite 750, Washington D.C., 20005 U.S.A.)

  • Bach Ruben

    (University of Mannheim,Mannheim, Germany.)

Abstract

The U.S. Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey asks many filter questions to identify the items that households purchase. Each reported purchase triggers follow-up questions about the amount spent and other details. We test the hypothesis that respondents learn how the questionnaire is structured and underreport purchases in later waves to reduce the length of the interview. We analyze data from 10,416 four-wave respondents over two years of data collection. We find no evidence of decreasing data quality over time; instead, panel respondents tend to give higher quality responses in later waves. The results also hold for a larger set of two-wave respondents.

Suggested Citation

  • Eckman Stephanie & Bach Ruben, 2021. "Panel Conditioning in the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 37(1), pages 53-69, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:vrs:offsta:v:37:y:2021:i:1:p:53-69:n:10
    DOI: 10.2478/jos-2021-0003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2021-0003
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2478/jos-2021-0003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vrs:offsta:v:37:y:2021:i:1:p:53-69:n:10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.