Exhaustive or exhausting? Evidence on respondent fatigue in long surveys

Jeong, D and Aggarwal, S and Robinson, J and Kumar, N and Spearot, A and Park, D S (2023) Exhaustive or exhausting? Evidence on respondent fatigue in long surveys. Journal of Development Economics, 161. p. 102992. ISSN 0304-3878

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

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.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Economics
Date Deposited: 27 Dec 2022 13:51
Last Modified: 27 Dec 2022 13:51
URI: https://eprints.exchange.isb.edu/id/eprint/1660

Actions (login required)

View Item
View Item