ABSTRACT

In online surveys, the use of manipulation checks aimed at measuring respondents’ attentiveness has become common. More than being measures of attentiveness pertaining to a specific survey, instructional manipulation checks (IMC) could work as generic measures of the quality of the answers a person gives when completing a questionnaire. By using several waves of the ITANES (Italian National Election Study) – University of Milan online panel survey, the article shows that the outcome of an IMC predicts the quality of the answers a respondent gives in previous and subsequent waves of the panel. Moreover, through a survey experiment that randomizes the length of an IMC we show that, overall, the answers’ quality of ‘attentive’ respondents assigned to different IMCs do not substantially vary. Findings also show that IMCs are reliable measures, as the outcome of two IMCs placed in two consecutive waves proved to be highly associated.

摘要

在在线调查中，使用旨在衡量受访者注意力的操纵检查已变得很普遍。教学操作检查 (IMC) 不仅可以衡量与特定调查相关的注意力，还可以作为一个人在完成问卷时给出的答案质量的通用衡量标准。通过使用几轮 ITANES（意大利全国选举研究）——米兰大学在线小组调查，文章显示 IMC 的结果可以预测受访者在小组的前一波和后续波中给出的答案的质量。此外，通过随机化 IMC 长度的调查实验，我们表明，总体而言，分配给不同 IMC 的“专心”受访者的答案质量没有显着差异。调查结果还表明，IMC 是可靠的衡量标准，