A Light-Touch Method to Improve Accurate Reporting of IDP’s Food Consumption
Misreporting is a well-known challenge for researchers in social sciences. This issue is especially prevalent if incentives for misreporting exist, for example, to claim certain benefits or hide illegal behavior. Internally displaced persons are a...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/335911533559402425/Eliciting-accurate-responses-to-consumption-questions-among-IDPs-in-South-Sudan-using-honesty-primes http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30229 |
| Summary: | Misreporting is a well-known challenge
for researchers in social sciences. This issue is especially
prevalent if incentives for misreporting exist, for example,
to claim certain benefits or hide illegal behavior.
Internally displaced persons are a population that is highly
dependent on aid receipts and, thus, have strong incentives
to underreport consumption levels. To improve reporting for
such vulnerable populations, this paper proposes to
integrate "honesty primes" into the consumption
module of the questionnaire. Honesty primes are unconscious
stimuli that induce a certain cognition or behavior. The
study assesses the effectiveness of a bundle of randomly
assigned primes within a sample of internally displaced
persons in South Sudan. In line with the main hypothesis,
positive and significant effects arise for low consumption
quantiles, especially consumption quantities that are more
susceptible to manipulation. Hence, honesty primes can act
as a cost-effective tool to induce more accurate reporting.
Further research is needed to identify more effective primes
for the respective population of interest. |
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