Can I just check…? Effects of edit check questions on measurement error and survey estimates

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

February 15, 2014

Abstract:

Household income is difficult to measure, since it requires the collection of information about all potential income sources for each member of a household.Weassess the effects of two types of edit check questions on measurement error and survey estimates: within-wave edit checks use responses to questions earlier in the same interview to query apparent inconsistencies in responses; dependent interviewing uses responses from prior interviews to query apparent inconsistencies over time.Weuse data from three waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to assess the effects of edit checks on estimates, and data from an experimental study carried out in the context of the BHPS, where survey responses were linked to individual administrative records, to assess the effects on measurement error. The findings suggest that interviewing methods without edit checks underestimate non-labour household income in the lower tail of the income distribution. The effects on estimates derived from total household income, such as poverty rates or transition rates into and out of poverty, are small.

Published in

Journal of Official Statistics

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 30 , p.45 -62

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/jos-2014-0003

Subjects

Link

http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jos.2014.30.issue-1/jos-2014-0003/jos-2014-0003.xml

Notes

Open Access journal


Related Publications

#522460

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest