We invite submissions to a session of the ESRA 2017 conference: *** Deviations and Fraud in Surveys - the Impact of Motivation and Incentives ***
See below for more information on the session. The conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, July 17-21, 2017.
For more information or to submit a paper, see: http://www.europeansurveyresearch.org/conference
Please submit by December 4, 2016.
Thank you very much for your attention,
Katrin Auspurg, Thomas Hinz, Natalja Menold and Peter Winker (Organizers)
*** Deviations and Fraud in Surveys – the Impact of Motivation and Incentives *** Keywords: Data Manipulation, Data Quality, Survey Errors, Motivation, Interviewer Effects
Abstract: Credibility of social science was repeatedly jeopardized by recent and spectacular cases of deviant behavior in conducting surveys or fraud in presenting survey based research results. Several times researchers published path-breaking results that turned out to be 'too good to be true.' Because the incentive system in science commonly rewards originality higher than accurateness, most probably, the detected cases of making up data or trimming results are only the tip of the iceberg.
What makes the situation in survey research even more complex is the fact that several actors are involved who have manifold incentives to manipulate data. These include the researchers, survey institutes, survey supervisors, interviewers and respondents. Contributions to the session will discuss the motivation, prevalence and implications of misbehavior of actors in survey research. Of interest are theoretical approaches and empirical studies on the motivation, detection and prevention of data manipulations. Strategies to detect fraud deserve specific attention, but we also welcome empirical work on causal mechanisms: Which conditions most likely trigger fraud? Which interventions could accordingly work? Some examples along the survey process highlight possible topics for the session:
(1) Respondents often share an interest with the interviewers to save time by taking inaccurate short cuts in the questionnaires. Additionally, they are prone to provide false answers, for instance, if questions are sensitive. Both kinds of behavior yield inaccurate measurements.
(2) Interviewers often may have a high discretion on many decisions in the process of conducting a survey (e.g. when selecting households in a random walk sample, by shortening the interview time through steering the respondents to filter options in questionnaires, or making up interviews (partly) from the scratch). The motivation for deviant behavior can be influenced by factors such as task difficulty, interviewers' ability, and experience, but also by the quality of questionnaires and instructions and other administrative characteristics of the survey.
(3) Survey institutes often operate commercially under high cost and time pressure. In order to fulfill their contractual obligations to their clients they might have incentives to change, for instance, complex screening procedures without documenting, to manipulate statistics on non-response or even produce (near) duplicates to satisfy quota.
(4) Finally, researchers in survey research can engage in questionable practices as well when they select cases and statistical models just in purpose to get most sensational results.