MOTIVATED MISREPORTING IN WEB PANELS

Previous studies of reporting to filter questions have shown that respondents learn to say "No" to filter questions to shorten the interview, a phenomenon called motivated misreporting. Similar learning effects have been observed in panel surveys: respondents seem to recall the structure of a survey from earlier waves and, in subsequent waves, give responses that shorten the interview. Hence, concerns arise that misreporting to filter questions worsens over time in a panel study. We conducted an experiment using filter questions in two consecutive waves of a monthly online panel to study how misreporting to filter questions changes over time. While we replicate previous findings on the filter question format effect, we do not find any support for the hypothesis that responses to filter questions worsen over time. Our findings add to the literature on data quality in web panels, panel conditioning, and motivated misreporting.