Survey Design and the Analysis of Satisfaction

Gabriella Conti () and Stephen Pudney

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2011, vol. 93, issue 3, pages 1087-1093

Abstract: We analyze the effect of survey design on reported job satisfaction by exploiting two quasi-experiments in the British Household Panel Survey: a change in question design and parallel use of different interview modes. We show that apparently minor differences in survey design lead to substantial biases in econometric results, particularly on gender differences. The common empirical finding that women care less about wages and prefer to work fewer hours than men appears largely an artifact of survey design rather than a true behavioral difference. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2011
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