Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey
How prevalent is data fabrication in household surveys? Would such fabrication substantially affect the validity of empirical analyses? We document how we identified such fabrication in South Africa's longitudinal National Income Dynamics Study, which affected about 7% of the sample. The fabric...
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30131 |
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okr-10986-301312021-05-25T10:54:40Z Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey Finn, Arden Ranchhod, Vimal INTERVIEWER FRAUD DATA QUALITY DATA COLLECTION SURVEY METHODS How prevalent is data fabrication in household surveys? Would such fabrication substantially affect the validity of empirical analyses? We document how we identified such fabrication in South Africa's longitudinal National Income Dynamics Study, which affected about 7% of the sample. The fabrication was detected while fieldwork was still on-going, and the relevant interviews were reconducted. We thus have an observed counterfactual that allows us to measure how problematic such fabrication would have been, had it remained undetected. We compare estimates from the dataset that includes the fabricated interviews with corresponding estimates that includes the corrected data instead. We find that the fabrication would not have affected our univariate and cross-sectional estimates meaningfully, but would have led us to reach substantially different conclusions when implementing panel estimators. We estimate that the data quality investigation in this survey had a benefit-cost ratio of at least 24, and was thus easily justifiable. 2018-08-03T19:28:56Z 2018-08-03T19:28:56Z 2017-02 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30131 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Africa South Africa |
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Digital Repository |
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Foreign Institution |
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Digital Repositories |
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World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
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World Bank |
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INTERVIEWER FRAUD DATA QUALITY DATA COLLECTION SURVEY METHODS |
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INTERVIEWER FRAUD DATA QUALITY DATA COLLECTION SURVEY METHODS Finn, Arden Ranchhod, Vimal Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
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Africa South Africa |
| description |
How prevalent is data fabrication in household surveys? Would such fabrication substantially affect the validity of empirical analyses? We document how we identified such fabrication in South Africa's longitudinal National Income Dynamics Study, which affected about 7% of the sample. The fabrication was detected while fieldwork was still on-going, and the relevant interviews were reconducted. We thus have an observed counterfactual that allows us to measure how problematic such fabrication would have been, had it remained undetected. We compare estimates from the dataset that includes the fabricated interviews with corresponding estimates that includes the corrected data instead. We find that the fabrication would not have affected our univariate and cross-sectional estimates meaningfully, but would have led us to reach substantially different conclusions when implementing panel estimators. We estimate that the data quality investigation in this survey had a benefit-cost ratio of at least 24, and was thus easily justifiable. |
| format |
Journal Article |
| author |
Finn, Arden Ranchhod, Vimal |
| author_facet |
Finn, Arden Ranchhod, Vimal |
| author_sort |
Finn, Arden |
| title |
Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
| title_short |
Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
| title_full |
Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
| title_fullStr |
Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Genuine Fakes : The Prevalence and Implications of Data Fabrication in a Large South African Survey |
| title_sort |
genuine fakes : the prevalence and implications of data fabrication in a large south african survey |
| publisher |
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank |
| publishDate |
2018 |
| url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30131 |
| _version_ |
1764471287420289024 |