Accounting for individual-specific reliability of self-assessed measures of economic preferences and personality traits

Arbeitspapier

Measures based on self-assessments, which are increasingly important in empirical economic research, are plagued by measurement error. This paper presents the first attempt at measuring both revealed and self-reported reliability of individuals' answers on self-reports of latent characteristics. We show that measurement error on self-reports relevant to economists is heterogeneous across individuals and can be reasonably approximated by a distribution with two unobserved types. We propose a straightforward survey question which allows to distinguish individuals who give highly reliable answers from those who do not, using cross-sectional data. We demonstrate that it predicts revealed individual reliability over and above all measured characterises, survey conditions, and experimental treatments. We show how our simple self-reported reliability measure can be used to cost-effectively reduce attenuation bias in estimates of cognitive and non-cognitive determinants of high school GPA, college graduation, unemployment, and life satisfaction. Without requiring panel data, the achieved correction is similar to some of the most effective reduced-form theory-based approaches in the existing literature. Finally, we clarify the role of effort and self-knowledge in generating measurement error and propose a simple model which rationalizes our findings.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ECONtribute Discussion Paper ; No. 224

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access ; Survey Methods; Sampling Methods ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡
• Subject: Reliability ; measurement error ; personality traits ; economic preferences ; self-assessments

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dohmen, Thomas ; Jagelka, Tomáés
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI)
• (where): Bonn and Cologne
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/278400
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET