Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys
Internet-based surveys have expanded public opinion data collection at the expense of monitoring respondent attentiveness, potentially compromising data quality. Researchers now have to evaluate attentiveness ex-post. We propose a new proxy for attentiveness—response-time attentiveness clustering (R...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145319 https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.32 |
| _version_ | 1826214105154846720 |
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| author | Read, Blair Wolters, Lukas Berinsky, Adam J |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Read, Blair Wolters, Lukas Berinsky, Adam J |
| author_sort | Read, Blair |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Internet-based surveys have expanded public opinion data collection at the expense of monitoring respondent attentiveness, potentially compromising data quality. Researchers now have to evaluate attentiveness ex-post. We propose a new proxy for attentiveness—response-time attentiveness clustering (RTAC)—that uses dimension reduction and an unsupervised clustering algorithm to leverage variation in response time between respondents and across questions. We advance the literature theoretically arguing that the existing dichotomous classification of respondents as fast or attentive is insufficient and neglects slow and inattentive respondents. We validate our theoretical classification and empirical strategy against commonly used proxies for survey attentiveness. In contrast to other methods for capturing attentiveness, RTAC allows researchers to collect attentiveness data unobtrusively without sacrificing space on the survey instrument. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:59:53Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/145319 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:59:53Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1453192023-01-10T16:37:05Z Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys Read, Blair Wolters, Lukas Berinsky, Adam J Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Internet-based surveys have expanded public opinion data collection at the expense of monitoring respondent attentiveness, potentially compromising data quality. Researchers now have to evaluate attentiveness ex-post. We propose a new proxy for attentiveness—response-time attentiveness clustering (RTAC)—that uses dimension reduction and an unsupervised clustering algorithm to leverage variation in response time between respondents and across questions. We advance the literature theoretically arguing that the existing dichotomous classification of respondents as fast or attentive is insufficient and neglects slow and inattentive respondents. We validate our theoretical classification and empirical strategy against commonly used proxies for survey attentiveness. In contrast to other methods for capturing attentiveness, RTAC allows researchers to collect attentiveness data unobtrusively without sacrificing space on the survey instrument. 2022-09-08T15:15:12Z 2022-09-08T15:15:12Z 2021-09-15 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145319 Read, B., Wolters, L., & Berinsky, A. (2021). Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys. Political Analysis, 1-20 https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.32 10.1017/pan.2021.32 Political Analysis Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Lukas Wolters |
| spellingShingle | Read, Blair Wolters, Lukas Berinsky, Adam J Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title | Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title_full | Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title_fullStr | Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title_full_unstemmed | Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title_short | Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys |
| title_sort | racing the clock using response time as a proxy for attentiveness on self administered surveys |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/145319 https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.32 |
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