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Asking Survey Respondents about Reasons for Their Behavior: A Split Ballot Experiment in Ethiopia

[journal article]

Lau, Charles Q.
McHenry, Gretchen

Abstract

When policymakers design programs and policies, they often want to understand why individuals engage in particular behaviors. Collecting survey data about respondents’ reasons for their behavior presents important challenges, and there is little methodological research on this topic. We conducted an... view more

When policymakers design programs and policies, they often want to understand why individuals engage in particular behaviors. Collecting survey data about respondents’ reasons for their behavior presents important challenges, and there is little methodological research on this topic. We conducted an experiment to investigate the best practices for asking questions about respondents’ reasons for their behavior. We embedded a split ballot experiment in a face-to-face survey of 608 entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. Respondents were asked questions about why they did not engage in three business practices (advertising, sharing product storage, and switching suppliers). When asked these questions, respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: close-ended questions, open-ended questions with interviewer probing, and open-ended questions without probing. Respondents endorsed more responses when asked close-ended (versus open-ended) questions. Close-ended responses produced higher rates of socially undesirable responses and fewer “other” responses. Notably, probing had no effect on the number or types of responses given. Our results suggest some best practices for asking respondents questions about reasons for their behavior.... view less

Keywords
developing country; Ethiopia; survey research; survey; entrepreneur; response behavior; data collection method; motivation; analysis; interview

Classification
Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods

Document language
English

Publication Year
2014

Page/Pages
14 p.

Journal
Survey Methods: Insights from the Field (2014)

DOI
https://doi.org/10.13094/SMIF-2014-00001

ISSN
2296-4754

Status
Published Version; peer reviewed

Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works


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© 2007 - 2025 Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR).
Based on DSpace, Copyright (c) 2002-2022, DuraSpace. All rights reserved.