Collaborative Research: Motivated Underreporting

本研究探讨了测量误差的三种表现形式，并探讨了它们之间的关系。 第一种形式的计量误差影响到为确定有资格参加某项调查的人口成员（例如65岁以上的人）而设计的问题。 几项研究发现，合格人群中的成员在筛选面试中被低估。 虽然没有一项调查能完全涵盖其目标人口，但针对特定亚人口的调查似乎特别容易掩盖这一特定人口。 第二种形式的测量误差涉及过滤问题。 这些问题，取决于如何回答，要么导致额外的后续问题，要么导致答复者跳过后续项目。 许多调查研究人员认为，受访者可能会对过滤问题给出错误答案，以避免后续问题。 因此，许多调查在调查问卷开始时提出过滤问题，稍后再提出后续问题，而不是将过滤问题和后续问题交叉提出。 测量误差的最后一种形式涉及条件作用或样本时间效应。 在过去的40年里，许多调查研究者认为，在持续的跟踪调查中，受访者在跟踪调查的各个阶段和日记调查的各个时间段报告的相关事件较少，这三种现象的共同点似乎是出于减少完成问卷所需的努力的动机而少报。 但是，我们并不清楚这些形式的错误是由面试官做的事情，还是受访者做的事情，或者两者兼而有之。 拟议的研究使用新的实验和分析现有的数据，试图找出这些影响的轨迹（采访者与受访者），并探讨不同的方法来减少这些错误的有效性。 该项目将有助于改进从受这些问题影响的调查项目中得出的各种国家统计数据。 该项目还将进一步培训研究生，并促进这两个机构调查研究人员的专业培训。 这项研究得到了方法、测量和统计方案以及联邦统计机构联合会的支持，作为支持调查和统计方法研究的联合活动的一部分。

This research examines three forms of survey measurement error and investigates the relations among them. The first form of measurement error affects questions designed to identify members of the population eligible for a given survey (for example, persons over 65 years old). Several studies find that members of the eligible population are underreported in screening interviews. Although no survey perfectly covers its target population, surveys aimed at specific subpopulations seem especially prone to undercover that particular population. The second form of measurement error involves filter questions. These are questions that, depending on how they are answered, either lead to additional follow-up questions or to the respondent's skipping out of the follow-up items. Many survey researchers believe that respondents are likely to give false answers to the filter questions in order to avoid the follow-up questions. As a result, many surveys ask the filter questions at the beginning of the questionnaire and administer the follow-up questions later on rather than interleaving the filter and follow-up questions. The final form of measurement error involves conditioning, or time-in-sample, effects. Over the last forty years, many survey researchers have suggested that respondents in ongoing panel surveys report fewer relevant events across waves of the panel survey and across time periods in a diary survey.What the three phenomena appear to have in common is underreporting motivated by the desire to reduce the effort needed to complete the questionnaire. But it is not clear whether these forms of error result from something the interviewers do, something the respondents do, or both. The proposed studies use both new experiments and analyze existing data to try to pinpoint the locus of these effects (interviewers versus respondents) and to explore the effectiveness of different methods for reducing these errors. The project will contribute to the improvement of various national statistics that are derived from survey items affected by these problems. The project also will further the training of graduate students and contribute to the professional training of survey researchers at both institutions. The research is supported by the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program and a consortium of federal statistical agencies as part of a joint activity to support research on survey and statistical methodology.