Abstract

Panel surveys are one of the main tools for measuring change in a population, but there is evidence that simply asking the same questions of the same respondents in repeated interviews can lead to over-reporting of change. The project will evaluate dependent interviewing (DI), a method increasingly used in panel surveys. With proactive DI, the focus of this study, responses from the previous interview are preloaded into the questionnaire and respondents are reminded of this information before being asked about their current situation. Several different formats of proactive DI are possible, but in each case the expectation is that DI reduces the amount of spurious change over time. There is however concern that respondents may falsely confirm previous information as still applying, leading to underreporting of change. Although there is evidence of false confirmation with proactive DI, the extent and causes of this phenomenon are unknown. The effects of the different proactive DI formats on measurement error have also not been assessed. As a result survey managers currently choose between the formats somewhat arbitrarily. In this project we will design a telephone survey to experimentally contrast different DI formats (and link the survey data to administrative data held by IAB), tol address the following questions:

(1) Which DI format produces the best data quality?
(2) What causes false confirmation of preloaded information?
(3) What effect does the DI format have on biases in key longitudinal labour market estimates, such as inflows and outflows from unemployment, occupational change or wage mobility?