The Effect of Survey Design on Household Reporting of Financial Difficulty

Abstract

We compare two Australian studies which ask households to report on the incidence of specific events of financial difficulty such as failure to pay the utility bill on time or seeking help from welfare agencies. Although collected within the same year, the two studies use markedly different survey methodologies. One study uses a written self-completion questionnaire completed after a face-to-face interview, asks about individual experience of financial difficulty and interviews each member of the household over the age of 15 years. The other study uses a computer-assisted face-to-face interview and asks one randomly selected member of the household about household level experience of financial difficulty. We find substantial differences in response rates, even after controlling for individual and household characteristics. The self-completion questionnaire elicits 33% more reports of financial difficulty for singles and 36% more for couple-headed households.

Identifying people in poverty: a multidimensional deprivation measure for the EU

“…As a result, certain groups such as elderly or those with low incomes are more likely to say "they do not want" certain items especially when their material situation is worse than before (Halleröd, 2006b;Hick, 2013;McKnight, 2013); or, elderly might be less likely to attribute deprivation to the shortage of money (Berthoud et al, 2006 Siminski & Yerokhin (2012) find no evidence that reporting bias contributes to the agegradient in deprivation, Gundersen & Ribar (2011) argue that food insecurity in the US is underreported due to social desirability bias. This evidence is also supported by the study of Breunig & McKibbin (2011) which shows that individuals report higher financial difficulty in written, self-completion questionnaire than in the computer-assistant face-to-face interview as the prior is exposed to less social desirability bias due to being a more impersonal method.…”

Happy Talk: Mode of Administration Effects on Subjective Well-Being

“…Outside the realm of HRQoL, Breunig and McKibbin (2011) Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). They find that reported financial difficulty is about 33-36% lower in F2F compared to self-completion interviews; an effect plausibly caused by the embarrassing association such a confession to another person has.…”

The Impact of Social Transfers on Income Poverty and Material Deprivation

“…Secondly, adverse circumstances may lower a person's aspirations to the degree that she responds by not having an item because she does not want it (Guio, 2009;Guio et al, 2012). Thirdly, feelings of shame may also result in underreporting of deprivation (Breunig & McKibbin, 2011). Finally, information of the quality of the different goods and their longevity (e.g.…”