Measures and tests of heaping in discrete quantitative distributions

John Roberts and Devon Brewer

Journal of Applied Statistics, 2001, vol. 28, issue 7, 887-896

Abstract: Heaping is often found in discrete quantitative data based on subject responses to open-ended interview questions or observer assessments. Heaping occurs when subjects or observers prefer some set of numbers as responses (e.g. multiples of 5) simply because of the features of this set. Although heaping represents a common type of measurement error, apparently no prior general measure of heaping exists. We present simple measures and tests of heaping in discrete quantitative data, illustrate them with data from an epidemiologic study, and evaluate the bias of these statistics. These techniques permit formal measurement of heaping and facilitate comparisons of the degree of heaping in data from different samples, substantive domains, and data collection methods.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02664760120074960 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:japsta:v:28:y:2001:i:7:p:887-896

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJAS20

DOI: 10.1080/02664760120074960

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Statistics is currently edited by Robert Aykroyd

More articles in Journal of Applied Statistics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().