Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17586
Authors: Stefanie Stantcheva
Abstract: Surveys are an essential approach for eliciting otherwise invisible factors such as perceptions, knowledge and beliefs, attitudes, and reasoning. These factors are critical determinants of social, economic, and political outcomes. Surveys are not merely a research tool. They are also not only a way of collecting data. Instead, they involve creating the process that will generate the data. This allows the researcher to create their own identifying and controlled variation. Thanks to the rise of mobile technologies andplatforms, surveys offer valuable opportunities to study either broadly representative samples or focus on specific groups. This paper offers guidance on the complete survey process, from the design of the questions and experiments to the recruitment of respondents and the collection of data to the analysis of survey responses. It covers issues related to the sampling process, selection and attrition, attention and carelessness, survey question design and measurement, response biases, and survey experiments
Keywords: surveys
JEL Codes: D9; H0; J0; P20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Surveys can directly measure perceptions and beliefs (C83) | Causal relationships between perceptions and actual behaviors (D91) |
| Well-designed surveys create controlled and identifying variation (C90) | Causal relationships between perceptions and actual behaviors (D91) |
| Poorly designed survey questions (C83) | Obscured true causal relationships (C32) |
| Use of mobile technologies (L96) | More accurate causal inferences about public attitudes and beliefs (C83) |