Over the past decades there has been an increasing use of panel surveys at the household or individual level, instead of using independent cross-sections. Panel data have important advantages, but there are also two potential drawbacks: attrition bias and panel conditioning effects. Attrition...

This article shows that respondents gain meaning from visual cues in a web survey as well as from verbal cues (words).We manipulated the layout of a five point rating scale using verbal, graphical, numerical, and symbolic language. This paper extends the existing literature in four directions:...

This paper investigates the role of pain in affecting self-reported work disability and employment of elderly workers in the US.We investigate pain and its relationship to work disability and work in a dynamic panel data model, using six biennial waves from the Health and Retirement Study.We...

Differences in answers in Internet and traditional surveys can be due to selection, mode, or context effects. We exploit unique experimental data to analyze mode and context effects controlling for arbitrary selection. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) surveys a random sample of the US 50+...

Self-reported work disability is analyzed in the US, the UK and the Netherlands.Different wordings of the questions lead to different work disability rates.But even if identical questions are asked, crosscountry differences remain substantial.Respondent evaluations of work limitations of...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes such as health, work disability, political efficacy, job satisfaction, etc. across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use systematically different response scales. Anchoring vignettes...

In this paper we investigate whether there are differences in design effects between trained and fresh respondents. In three experiments, we varied the number of items on a screen, the choice of response categories, and the layout of a five point rating scale. We find that trained respondents...

In this study we use an information-processing perspective to explore the impact of response scales on respondents answers in a web survey.This paper has four innovations compared to the existing literature: research is based on a different mode of administration (web), we use an open-ended...

The growing literature on precautionary saving clearly indicates the need for measurement of income uncertainty. In this paper we empirically analyze subjective income uncertainty in the Netherlands. Data come from the Dutch VSB panel. We measure income uncertainty directly by asking questions...

Panel conditioning arises if respondents are influenced by participation in previous surveys, such that their answers differ significantly from the answers of individuals who are interviewed for the first time. Having two panels—a trained one and a completely fresh one—created a unique...