A Light-Touch Method to Improve Accurate Reporting of IDP’s Food Consumption

Kaplan, Lennart ; Pape, Utz Johann ; Walsh, James

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: CONSUMPTION;    POVERTY;    QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN;    IDPs;    INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSON;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8539
RP-ID  :  WPS8539

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Misreporting is a well-known challengefor researchers in social sciences. This issue is especiallyprevalent if incentives for misreporting exist, for example,to claim certain benefits or hide illegal behavior.Internally displaced persons are a population that is highlydependent on aid receipts and, thus, have strong incentivesto underreport consumption levels. To improve reporting forsuch vulnerable populations, this paper proposes tointegrate "honesty primes" into the consumptionmodule of the questionnaire. Honesty primes are unconsciousstimuli that induce a certain cognition or behavior. Thestudy assesses the effectiveness of a bundle of randomlyassigned primes within a sample of internally displacedpersons in South Sudan. In line with the main hypothesis,positive and significant effects arise for low consumptionquantiles, especially consumption quantities that are moresusceptible to manipulation. Hence, honesty primes can actas a cost-effective tool to induce more accurate reporting.Further research is needed to identify more effective primesfor the respective population of interest.