Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
Publication date
August 10, 2026
Summary:
Reliability in survey measurement is a crucial aspect of data quality. Yet surprisingly little attention has been given to assessing reliability for commonly used survey measures or evaluating how reliability may vary across different survey contexts. This study leverages the Comparative Panel File (CPF), a dataset compiled from long-running household panel surveys in seven countries—Australia, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to estimate the reliability of 14 survey indicators from 2001 to 2020 using quasi-simplex models. We find that reliability is high and consistent across countries for factual items but substantially lower and more variable for self-assessment items (e.g., satisfaction with life, satisfaction with work, self-rated health). Additionally, we find that variations in question wording across the panels (e.g., asking about health currently versus in general) led to different reliabilities. We discuss the implications these findings have for measurement comparability in cross-national research.
Published in
Survey Research Methods
Volume and page numbers
Volume: 20 , p.181 -192
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2026.v20i2.8525
ISSN
18643361
Subjects
Notes
Copyright (c) 2026 Christopher Antoun, Alexandru Cernat
Open Access
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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