Working Paper: NBER ID: w30439
Authors: Dahyeon Jeong; Shilpa Aggarwal; Jonathan Robinson; Naresh Kumar; Alan Spearot; David Sungho Park
Abstract: Living standards measurement surveys require sustained attention for several hours. We quantify survey fatigue by randomizing the order of questions in 2-3 hour-long in-person surveys. An additional hour of survey time increases the probability that a respondent skips a question by 10-64%. Because skips are more common, the total monetary value of aggregated categories such as assets or expenditures declines as the survey goes on, and this effect is sizeable for some categories: for example, an extra hour of survey time lowers food expenditures by 25%. We find similar effect sizes within phone surveys in which respondents were already familiar with questions, suggesting that cognitive burden may be a key driver of survey fatigue.
Keywords: survey fatigue; long surveys; response quality
JEL Codes: C83; C93; O12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| survey fatigue (C83) | attenuate measured treatment effects of cash transfers (F35) |
| increased survey duration (C83) | higher skip rates (G51) |
| increased survey time (C83) | lower reported food expenditures (D12) |
| increased survey time (C83) | decrease in number of items listed in open-ended questions (C83) |
| increased survey time (C83) | higher likelihood of reporting no value for fixed list questions (C83) |