Difference between revisions of "Recall Bias"

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* Development Impact Blogpost on [http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/decomposing-response-error-improve-consumption-survey-design Response Error in Consumption Surveys] and the related [http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/122481467999693721/pdf/WPS7646.pdf paper]
* Development Impact Blogpost on [http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/decomposing-response-error-improve-consumption-survey-design Response Error in Consumption Surveys] and the related [http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/122481467999693721/pdf/WPS7646.pdf paper]
* Blog from Financial Access on [http://www.financialaccess.org/blog/2015/7/30/reliability-of-self-reported-data-recall-bias The Reliability of Self-reported Data]
* Blog from Financial Access on [http://www.financialaccess.org/blog/2015/7/30/reliability-of-self-reported-data-recall-bias The Reliability of Self-reported Data]
* Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer, Carolina Sánchez-Paramo, [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387811000708 The impact of recall periods on reported morbidity and health seeking behavior], In Journal of Development Economics, Volume 98, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 76-88, ISSN 0304-3878, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.07.001.
* Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer, Carolina Sánchez-Paramo, [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387811000708 The impact of recall periods on reported morbidity and health seeking behavior], In Journal of Development Economics, Volume 98, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 76-88, ISSN 0304-3878, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.07.001. Keywords: Health; Recall effects; Health seeking behavior; Impacts of sickness
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387811000708)
Keywords: Health; Recall effects; Health seeking behavior; Impacts of sickness


[[Category: Questionnaire Design]]
[[Category: Questionnaire Design]]

Revision as of 20:46, 6 November 2017

Error caused by inaccurate or incomplete recollection of events. A particular concern for retrospective survey questions.

Read First

  • Lower salience and longer recall periods increase forgetfulness [1]
  • How long is "too long" for a recall period for a survey question? It depends on the type of event: infrequent events (e.g. purchases of major assets) will be memorable for longer periods of time than routine events (e.g. use of public transportation).

Guidelines

How to avoid?

Useful strategies:

  1. Where possible, use methods to reduce recall periods for key indicators. For example, more frequent follow-up surveys by phone, or personal diaries
  2. When Piloting your Survey, carefully test different recall periods; if possible try shorter and longer periods and check for differences in variance

Subsection 2

Subsection 3

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This article is part of the topic Questionnaire Design


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