IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/polals/v22y2014i01p130-141_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experiments to Reduce the Over-Reporting of Voting: A Pipeline to the Truth

Author

Listed:
  • Hanmer, Michael J.
  • Banks, Antoine J.
  • White, Ismail K.

Abstract

Voting is a fundamental part of any democratic society. But survey-based measures of voting are problematic because a substantial proportion of nonvoters report that they voted. This over-reporting has consequences for our understanding of voting as well as the behaviors and attitudes associated with voting. Relying on the “bogus pipeline” approach, we investigate whether altering the wording of the turnout question can cause respondents to provide more accurate responses. We attempt to reduce over-reporting simply by changing the wording of the vote question by highlighting to the respondent that: (1) we can in fact find out, via public records, whether or not they voted; and (2) we (survey administrators) know some people who say they voted did not. We examine these questions through a survey on US voting-age citizens after the 2010 midterm elections, in which we ask them about voting in those elections. Our evidence shows that the question noting we would check the records improved the accuracy of the reports by reducing the over-reporting of turnout.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanmer, Michael J. & Banks, Antoine J. & White, Ismail K., 2014. "Experiments to Reduce the Over-Reporting of Voting: A Pipeline to the Truth," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 130-141, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:22:y:2014:i:01:p:130-141_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1047198700013644/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Römer, Ulf & Weber, Ron & Mußhoff, Oliver & Turvey, Calcum G., 2017. "Truth and consequences: Bogus pipeline experiment in informal small business lending," DARE Discussion Papers 1702, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (DARE).
    2. Irfan Nooruddin, 2014. "Making Surveys Work Better: Experiments in Public Opinion Research," Studies in Indian Politics, , vol. 2(1), pages 105-108, June.
    3. Ulf Römer & Oliver Mußhoff & Ron Weber & Calum G. Turvey, 2018. "Assessing the Reliability of Self‐reported Income Information in Informal Small Business Lending through a Bogus Pipeline Experiment," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 726-738, September.
    4. Matthew DeBell & Jon A. Krosnick & Katie Gera & David S. Yeager & Michael P. McDonald, 2020. "The Turnout Gap in Surveys: Explanations and Solutions," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 49(4), pages 1133-1162, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:22:y:2014:i:01:p:130-141_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pan .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.