How Survey Design Affects Elicited Perceptions and Inference on Health Outcomes

调查设计如何影响对健康结果的感知和推断

基本信息

批准号：
8371024
负责人：
ROBIN L. LUMSDAINE
金额：
$ 6.79万
依托单位：
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2012
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2012-09-30 至 2015-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project considers the role of survey design and question-framing in evaluating subjective response questions commonly used to elicit information about health and wellbeing. It also develops econometric techniques to control for biases that might arise as a result. The project will investigate three widely-used longitudina datasets, the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), and will lead to cross-country comparisons of the influences being studied. The proposed project develops econometric techniques to control for biases that might arise from survey design and question phrasing in secondary datasets and will address the following questions: (1) How do different characterizations of the points of a scale or the wording of a question affect the distributions of responses to survey questions about health or well-being? (2) Which individuals are most susceptible to influences of survey design such as question wording and sequencing? 3) To what extent do people evaluate questions in absolute terms, without consideration of their relation to a broader population, versus in relative terms, through consideration of a reference population? (4) If there is predictable variation in the effects of these influences, can that information be used to improve predictions of future health or economic outcomes of interest? (5) What role do perceptions play in health or economic decisions and outcomes? (6) Comparing responses across countries, what adjustments are necessary to account for reporting or attitudinal heterogeneity and improve inference? The extent to which these biases differ across sub-populations is important from a policy perspective since failure to control for attitudinal heterogeneity could lead to flawed assessments of either new or existing policies. On aggregate, incorrect inference could prove costly if behavior does not respond as predicted. The analysis will consider ways to measure reporting and attitudinal heterogeneity and to use this information to improve inference from models of future health and economic outcome variables (e.g., whether an individual has a heart attack, whether inflation outpaces retirees' income). PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Often policymakers rely on research findings using survey data to evaluate existing policies and recommend new ones. Yet by their design, many survey questions contain an element of subjectivity that may be influenced by external factors or self-perceptions. The proposed research will develop techniques to identify and measure these influences, so policymakers can better predict the expected response to a proposed policy change.

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的项目考虑了调查设计和问题在评估主观回答问题中的作用，该问题通常用于引起有关健康和福祉的信息。它还开发了计量经济学技术来控制可能导致的偏见。该项目将调查三个广泛使用的纵向数据集，即健康和退休研究（HRS），英国的衰老纵向研究（ELSA）以及欧洲的健康，衰老和退休调查（股份），并将导致所研究影响的跨国比较。拟议的项目开发了计量经济学技术，以控制次要数据集中的调查设计和问题措辞可能引起的偏见，并将解决以下问题：（1）如何对量表的点或问题的措辞的不同特征或问题的措辞影响影响。对有关健康或福祉的调查问题的回答？（2）哪些人最容易受到调查设计的影响，例如问题措辞和测序？ 3）人们在多大程度上以绝对术语评估问题，而不考虑其与更广泛的人群的关系，而不是通过考虑参考人群来评估问题？（4）如果这些影响的影响有可预测的差异，该信息是否可以用来改善对未来健康或感兴趣的经济成果的预测？（5）观念在健康或经济决策和成果中起什么作用？（6）比较各个国家的回答，以说明报告或态度异质性并改善推断需要什么调整？从政策的角度来看，这些偏见在各个子人群中的不同程度很重要，因为未能控制态度异质性可能会导致对新政策或现有政策的评估有缺陷。总体而言，如果行为不按预期做出响应，则不正确的推论可能会证明昂贵。该分析将考虑衡量报告和态度异质性的方法，并使用这些信息来改善未来健康和经济结果变量模型的推论（例如，个人是否具有心脏病发作，通货膨胀是否超过退休人员的收入）。公共卫生相关性：政策制定者通常使用调查数据来评估现有政策并推荐新政策。然而，通过其设计，许多调查问题包含一个主观性元素，可能受外部因素或自我感知影响。拟议的研究将开发以识别和衡量这些影响的技术，以便政策制定者可以更好地预测对拟议政策变化的预期反应。