Benford’s Law as an Instrument for Fraud Detection in Surveys Using the Data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Joerg-Peter Schraepler ()
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Joerg-Peter Schraepler: Ruhr-Uni Bochum
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jörg-Peter Schräpler

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), 2011, vol. 231, issue 5-6, pages 685-718

Abstract: This paper focuses on fraud detection in surveys using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data as an example for testing newlymethods proposed here. A statistical theoremreferred to as Benford’s Law states that in many sets of numerical data, the significant digits are not uniformly distributed, as one might expect, but adhere to a certain logarithmic probability function. In order to detect fraud, we derive several requirements that should, according to this law, be fulfilled in the case of survey data.We show that in several SOEP subsamples, Benford’s Law holds for the available continuous data. For this analysis, we developed a measure that reflects the plausibility of the digit distribution in interviewer clusters. We are thus able to demonstrate that several interviews that were known to have been fabricated and therefore deleted in the original user data set can now be detected using this method. Furthermore, in one subsample, we use this method to identify a case of an interviewer falsifying ten interviews not previously detected by the fieldwork organization.

Keywords: Falsification; data quality; Benford’s Law; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C69 C81 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Working Paper: Benford's Law As an Instrument for Fraud Detection in Surveys Using the Data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (2010)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jns:jbstat:v:231:y:2011:i:5-6:p:685-718

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