Too Fast, too Straight, too Weird: Non-Reactive Indicators for Meaningless Data in Internet Surveys

Practitioners use various indicators to screen for meaningless, careless, or fraudulent responses in Internet surveys. This study employs an experimental-like design to empirically test the ability of non-reactive indicators to identify records with low data quality. Findings suggest that careless r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSurvey research methods Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 229 - 248
Main Author Leiner, Dominik J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published European Survey Research Association 01.01.2019
Subjects
careless responding
data cleaning
meaningless data
online surveys
paradata
Umfrageforschung
web based surveys
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Summary:Practitioners use various indicators to screen for meaningless, careless, or fraudulent responses in Internet surveys. This study employs an experimental-like design to empirically test the ability of non-reactive indicators to identify records with low data quality. Findings suggest that careless responses are most reliably identified by questionnaire completion time, but the tested indicators do not allow for detecting intended faking. The article introduces various indicators, their benefits and drawbacks, proposes a completion speed index for common application in data cleaning, and discusses whether to remove meaningless records at all.
ISSN:1864-3361
1864-3361
DOI:10.18148/srm/2019.v13i3.7403