TY - JOUR
T1 - Income and outcomes
T2 - Social desirability bias distorts measurements of the relationship between income and political behavior
AU - Hariri, Jacob Gerner
AU - Lassen, David Dreyer
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Much empirical work in the social sciences relies on the accuracy of survey responses. Of all the questions answered by survey respondents, few are as common as those concerning income: Income is a crucial determinant of an individual’s attitudes and behaviors and a standard correlate in political science survey research. This paper uses Danish administrative records to identify systematic error in survey respondents’ self-reported income. We show that income overreporting is most pronounced among individuals who share the characteristics of high-income individuals, in ways that suggest the presence of social desirability bias. Further, this leads to biased estimates and distorted conclusions in a number of common applications in political science, but a simple logarithmic transformation eliminates the bias. More broadly, our results indicate that to understand the income–attitudes nexus in a given context, survey researchers should take into account social desirability bias and the pattern of income misreporting in that context.
AB - Much empirical work in the social sciences relies on the accuracy of survey responses. Of all the questions answered by survey respondents, few are as common as those concerning income: Income is a crucial determinant of an individual’s attitudes and behaviors and a standard correlate in political science survey research. This paper uses Danish administrative records to identify systematic error in survey respondents’ self-reported income. We show that income overreporting is most pronounced among individuals who share the characteristics of high-income individuals, in ways that suggest the presence of social desirability bias. Further, this leads to biased estimates and distorted conclusions in a number of common applications in political science, but a simple logarithmic transformation eliminates the bias. More broadly, our results indicate that to understand the income–attitudes nexus in a given context, survey researchers should take into account social desirability bias and the pattern of income misreporting in that context.
U2 - 10.1093/poq/nfw044
DO - 10.1093/poq/nfw044
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0033-362X
VL - 81
SP - 564
EP - 576
JO - Public Opinion Quarterly
JF - Public Opinion Quarterly
IS - 2
ER -