This paper presents an experimentally validated survey module to measure six key economic preferences – risk aversion, discounting, trust, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity – in a reliable, parsimonious and cost-effective way. The survey instruments included in the module were the...

We provide new evidence on the extent that survey items in the Preference Survey Module and the resulting Global Preference Survey measuring social preferences − trust, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity − predict behavior in corresponding experimental games outside the original...

A large literature studies subjective beliefs about economic facts using unincentivized survey questions. We devise randomized experiments in a representative online survey to investigate whether incentivizing belief accuracy affects stated beliefs about average earnings by professional degree...

Time-use researchers are typically interested in the time use of individuals, but time use data are samples of person-days. Given day-to-day variation in how people spend their time, this distinction is analytically important. We examine the conditions necessary to make inferences about the time...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

Kapteyn and Ypma (Journal of Labour Economics 2007) is an influential study of errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings. To fit their mixture models, Kapteyn and Ypma assume a specific fraction of their sample have error-free earnings. Using a new UK dataset, we assess the...

We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked...

We describe methods of combining administrative and survey data to improve the measurement of income. We begin by decomposing the total survey error in the mean of survey reports of dollars received from a government transfer program. We decompose this error into three parts, generalized...

Survey error is known to be pervasive and to bias even simple, but important estimates of means, rates, and totals, such as poverty statistics and the unemployment rate. To summarize and analyze the extent, sources, and consequences of survey error, we define empirical counterparts of key...

This paper advocates the use of Internet data for social sciences with a special focus on human resources issues. It discusses the potentials and challenges of Internet data for social sciences and presents a selection of the relevant literature to establish the wide spectrum of topics, which...