Matched retrospective life history data collected from the same individuals in two waves of the Malaysian Family Life Survey provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the quality of long-term recall data in a rapidly changing developing country. Recall quality, measured by consistency of incidence and dating of moves reported twelve years apart, is higher among the better educated. Respondents better remember more salient moves, those linked with other important life events such as marriage, childbirth, or a job change and moves that lasted a long time. Migrations that dim in memory as time passes are typically shorter duration or local moves, often made while the respondent was young. Dating of moves is also significantly improved when linked with other salient events. Our findings suggest concrete and practical steps that can be followed to improve the quality of retrospective life histories collected in field surveys.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Labor and Demography with number
0403026.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Bound, John & Brown, Charles & Mathiowetz, Nancy, 2001.
"Measurement error in survey data,"
Handbook of Econometrics,
in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 59, pages 3705-3843
Elsevier.
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