Can I Just Check...? Effects of Edit Check Questions on Measurement Error and Survey Estimates

Household income is difficult to measure, since it requires the collection of information about all potential income sources for each member of a household.Weassess the effects of two types of edit check questions on measurement error and survey estimates: within-wave edit checks use responses to questions earlier in the same interview to query apparent inconsistencies in responses; dependent interviewing uses responses from prior interviews to query apparent inconsistencies over time.Weuse data from three waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to assess the effects of edit checks on estimates, and data from an experimental study carried out in the context of the BHPS, where survey responses were linked to individual administrative records, to assess the effects on measurement error. The findings suggest that interviewing methods without edit checks underestimate non-labour household income in the lower tail of the income distribution. The effects on estimates derived from total household income, such as poverty rates or transition rates into and out of poverty, are small.