Short and Long Recall Errors in Retrospective Household Surveys: Evidence from a Developing Country

Yasuyuki Sawada, Hiroyuki Nakata and Mari Tanaka

Journal of Development Studies, 2019, vol. 55, issue 10, 2232-2253

Abstract: While recall errors in retrospective data from household surveys may generate estimation biases, the nature and the relative magnitude of the errors are still largely unknown, especially in the context of developing countries. To bridge this gap in the existing studies, we conduct a resurvey of respondents of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLS) 2006. The combined data set allows us to investigate a variety of short-term and long-term errors associated with recall surveys. First, our empirical results suggest that when we ask total expenditure rather than categorised expenditures, long recall errors are no worse than short recall errors. Second, we found mean-reversion only for long recall errors in the sum of categorised expenditures but not necessarily for total expenditure. Finally, the inclusion of household size, asset, income, and geographical dummy variables in regression analyses may mitigate the biases arising from measurement errors.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2018.1539478

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