Response Error and Questioning Technique in Surveys of Earnings Information

Response Error and Questioning Technique in Surveys of Earnings InformationAuthor(s): Michael E. BorusSource: Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 65, No. 330 (Jun., 1970), pp. 566-575Published by: American Statistical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2284567 .

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? Journal of the American Statistical Association June 1970, Volume 65, Number 330

Applications Section

Response Error and Questioning Technique in Surveys of Earnings Information

MICHAEL E. BORUS*

This article compares two questioning techniques for securinig earnings information. Two broad earnings questions and detailed work history information were asked of 300 residents of low income neighborhoods. Systematic differences, based on the level of earnings, the age and the number of jobs of the respondents, were found between the estimates from the two techniques.

When the estimates were compared with employer earnings data, it was found that for surveys dealing primarily with urban, low income neighborhoods, the broad question approach was as accurate as the work history method, and therefore, was preferable because of its lower cost and greater ease of use. For surveys of higher income groups, however, the work history approach provided more accurate earnings estimates. Here, the researcher will have to weigh the improved accuracy of the work history against its disadvantages. The relative response errors using the two approaches are presented to facilitate this decision.

1. INTRODUCTION

Earnings information collected in surveys is an important variable in studies of income distribution and social welfare [8], social, occupational and geo- graphic mobility [11, 13], government program evaluation [1], and other fields. Yet these studies are based on weak data. Response error has been shown to lead to systematic bias in survey collected earnings information [2].1 One of the causes of this type of error may be the method used to obtain the earnings data.

Presently, two basic approaches are used. The first is to ask one or two broad questions such as, "Last year (1968), how much did you receive in wages or salary before deductions?" [15]. The second approach, which has been used in a number of university connected surveys, is to ask many questions about each job held by the respondent to secure a detailed work history [1]. The respondent's annual earnings are then calculated from the work history.2

* Michael E. Borus is associate professor, Labor and Industrial Relations, Michigan State University. Re- search for this article was supported by the Office of Manpower Research, Manpower Administration, U. S. De- partment of Labor, Grant 91-24-66-30, and by an all-university research grant from Michigan State University. Computer facilities were supplied by the Brookings Institution. The interpretation and views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies of these organizations. The author is grateful to M. R. Daniels, S. H. Garfinkle, G. E. Hall, J. N. Morgan, and R. D. Morgenstern for useful comments on an earlier draft. He also thanks Joseph Daniel, Director of the Fort Wayne Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC) program and the NYC members who aided in the data collection. The author is particularly grateful to his class members of the Justin Morrill College, Michigan State University, who conducted the interviews.

1 Studies of other types of financial data have also found large response errors which were significantly related to demographic and other factors. Recent studies which cite earlier works are by Ferber [3, 4] and Maynes [6}.

2 Some surveys combine these two approaches. They ask detailed work history questions followed by the broad questions. The detailed questions are asked first to broaden the recali of the respondent. Then it is hoped the broad questions will secure a composite estimate that will include earnings from all of the respondent's jobs.

This study compared only the two basic approaches for two reasons. First, it was impossible to test additional alternatives without increasing the sample size. A combined approach could not be added to the present questionnaire since the respondents had already been asked both types of questions. Thus, a separate set of respondents using a second questionnaire would have been required.

566



Response Error and Questioning Technique 567

The evidence is not clear on the relative effectiveness of the two approaches. Miller [7, pp. 29-30] reported that asking for wages and salaries and total money income for each family member and asking for only total money income for the entire family gave approximately equal median incomes. Similarly, Pritzer and Sands [12, p. 216] found that a detailed work history questionnaire while uncovering more income recipients than did a broad questionnaire,3 produced median incomes that were changed by no more than $100 for any major group. Miller [8, pp. 209-11] reported similar findings for reinterviews following the 1960 Census.

In contrast, however, Sirkin, Maynes and Frechtling [14, p. 150] found that a detailed work history yielded more persons reporting no wage and salary income than did a questionnaire using three broad questions, but that the work history approach gave median earnings that were 14 percent higher. There were differences, though, in the times their surveys were conducted and in the type of interviewing organizations used. The work history approach was used by governmental interviewers nine months after the close of the year for which income information was sought, while the broad questions were asked by interviewers from a private research organization approximately one and a half months after the end of the year. It may be these factors that account for the difference between their findings and those of Miller and Pritzer and Sands. Consequently, Sirkin and his associates concluded: "Whether asking for a job history rather than for answers to a few questions is a more valid method or yields enough additional income data to be worth the cost is a question that should receive attention in the near future." [14, p. 149 ].

The purpose of this article is to provide attention to this question by testing the arguments in dispute. Survey data using both techniques will be compared with employer earnings reports for a sample that includes many poor persons. The extent and nature of differences between these data should show whether one questioning technique is generally preferable, or if not, which technique is to be preferred for different types of respondents.

2. THE DATA

Two sources of data were used for this study. The first was 300 personal interviews conducted in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on February 16-18, 1968, by one graduate and ten undergraduate students.4 Since particular stress was placed on the relative merits of the two questioning approaches for use in interviewing the poor, the interviews were conducted in six randomly selected blocks in each of the five central city census tracts that had the highest proportion of households with incomes below $3,000 in 1960.6 Consequently, a large proportion of the sample members were poor; average annual earnings were only about $2,500.

Second, the number and nature of the work history questions used in the combined approach vary from survey to survey [17, pp. XXIX-XXXVII and 9, pp. 399-457].tYsing the two extreme approacbes avoided the problems inherent in attempting to pick the most proper combination of work history and broad questions.

3 Studies of consumer expenditures also indicate that higher estimates result with more detailed questioning [5, p. 18 and 10, p. 761.

4 None of the students had extensive previous survey experience. The undergraduates were members of the author's class, 'Survey Research Methods in the Social Sciences,' in which survey construction and interviewing techniques were taught and the survey was designed. Each student conducted several pretest interviews prior to the survey. In black neighborhoods the students were accompanied by local Negro youths.

5 Census tracts 12, 13, 14, 18 and 19 were used [16, pp. 13-6].



568 Journal of the American Statistical Association, June 1970

The respondents, however, did not all have low incomes. Over 20 percent reported earnings of $5,000 or more.

The major portion of the interview was devoted to questions about the respondent's knowledge of local War on Poverty programs. As a part of the interview each respondent also was asked to provide demographic information about himself, the answers to two broad earnings questions and his work history for calender 1967.6 The broad questions were those used in the 1960 Census [17, p. XXXVII]. The interviewers were instructed to read these questions, repeat them when necessary but not to change the wording or to interpret them. On the work histories, however, they were given permission to interpret questions that did not receive an adequate reply when asked as worded in the interview schedule.

The possibility of one set of questions conditioning the responses to the second set was minimized by asking the broad questions first, immediately followed by the specific job-related questions. This procedure made it unlikely that after answering the two broad questions the respondents would have the time necessary to make their answers to the work history questions congruent with their first set of responses. Even so, the broad questions may have set the mood and evoked different answers to the work history questions than would have been provided were only the latter set asked. This did not appear to occur in the interview,7 though even if it did, such introductory questions could be used in seeking work history data, and sometimes are, without the loss of much time or effort.

-Of the total 300 completed interviews, ten were not used because of insuffi- cient, or what the interviewer felt was grossly inaccurate, earnings data. Four other interviews were not used because the respondents refused to give any earnings information. Thus, the survey found that over 95 percent of the sample respondents were willing and able to provide earnings information about them- selves. An additional five interviews had to be discarded because of incomplete or inaccurate demographic data. The remaining 281 interviews provided com- plete demographic data and earnings information sufficient to calculate an annual earnings figure.

The second source of data was wages paid during calender 1967 as reported by employers to the Indiana Employment Security Division. These data included the earnings for all employment covered under the Indiana Unemploy- ment Insurance Act.8 They served as the benchmarks against which the response errors could be measured.

3. THE ARGUMENTS

The proponents of the broad question approach present a sequence of four arguments to make a strong case for their practice:

1. The poor will not be able to provide the necessary work history information. Work histories require the respondents to remember large quantities of specific job in-

6 The earnings questions will be provided by the author on request. 7 There were large differences observed between the two sets of estimates which appear to indicate that the

two types of calculations were made relatively independently. 8 In Indiana all employers of four or more persons are covered by the Act except for agricultural employers,

nonprofit organizations and governmental units. Also excluded are individuals who work as domestics, who are self- employed, or who work for immediate relatives.




formation which they may consider to be unimportant or irrelevant details. Many respondents, particularly the poor or others who change jobs frequently, may Ilot be able or willing to remember all the facts necessary to estimate earninigs. Broad questions, on the other hand, are easy to understand and require recall of only basic data. Therefore, the broad question approach will secure estimates of earnings from a larger proportion of the persons interviewed.9

2. The two approaches give approximately the same estimates when sufficient work history information can be secured.

3. The two approaches give equally accurate estimates of earnings. Even if there are differences in the estimates calculated from the two approaches, the broad questions secure estimates as accurate as do the work histories.

4. Finally, one or two broad questions require less intensive training of interviewers, less interview time and less coding time and skill. Consequently, they are considerably cheaper to use.

The work history proponents agree with the last argument. They admit that their method is more difficult to use, time-consuming (especially when the respondent has more than one job) and costly. They maintain, however, that their method arrives at substantially more -accurate estimates than does the broad question approach and they challenge the validity of the first three of their opponents' arguments.

4. TESTING THE ARGUMENTS 4.1 The Poor Will Not Be Able to Provide the Necessary Work History Information

Of the 281 persons who supplied useful earnings information, 92.9 percent (261) provided both work history and broad question earnings information. Of the 20 persons unable to provide one type of informnation, 12 could not or would not provide answers to the broad questions while eight were unable to provide sufficient information to calculate earnings from the work histories. Thus, it would appear that the work history technique gathers data from at least as many persons as does the broad question technique, even when the sample includes a high proportion of low income respondents. The first of the arguments for using the broad questions, therefore, is not supported.

4.2 The Two Approaches Give the Same Estimates

Next, the earnings estimates from the two techniques were compared for the 281 sample members.'0 The average difference between the two estimates was minute. The work history estimate was $1.78 higher for the year, a difference that was less than .1 percent of the average estimated annual earnings using this approach (i.e., $2,514). Thus, it appears that for simple average earnings, the proponents of the broad question technique are correct. The method of questioning is not important because the two approaches give virtually identical estimates.

However, while the average difference was extremely small, the individual 9 Proponents of this argument usually follow up with the statement, 'Look, I don't know how much I earned

last year. How do you expect a poorly educated fellow who had many jobs to remember what he earned on any given job?"

10 For the 20 sample members who were able to respond to only one of the questioning techniques, that answer was used for both estimates. Under normal interviewing procedures, if the respondent failed to reply to one questioning approach, the good interviewer would use the other technique. Seventeen of the sample members showed W-2, Wage and Tax Statements to the interviewers. Again, these figures were used as the basis for both estimates. It should be noted that these procedures raise the degree of correspondence between the two types of estimates as shown in Table 1.




deviations were quite large. This can readily be seen in Table 1. Nearly one- fourth of the sample had estimates that differed by $500 or more, and approximately 15 percent had estimates that differed by $1,000 or more. The range of deviations ran from a positive $4,061 to a negative $2,506 and the standard deviation was $703.

To determine whether these differences were random or were systematically related to characteristics of the respondents or the interviewers, they were regressed on a number of characteristics. Independent variables were the respondents' broad question estimate of 1967 earnings, race, sex, size of household, marital status, age, education and number of jobs in 1967. The sex of the interviewer and whether the respondent and the interviewer were of the same sex were also included. Table 2 presents the results of this analysis.

The differences in the estimates were not random but, assuming no inter- actions among the independent variables, varied significantly with the respondent's level of earnings, age and number of jobs. As earnings increased, the predicted value of the broad question estimate minus the work history estimate increased. Respondents who were 20-24 years old had a significantly higher predicted value than did other age groups. Finally, the predicted value de- creased as the number of jobs reported in the interview increased. -The regression analysis thus indicated that while the difference in the average

earnings estimates calculated by the two methods was extremely small, this was because of the composition of the sample population studied. A sample com- posed of persons with different levels of earnings, age and numbers of jobs might have produced a considerable difference between the estimates. More importantly, when the earnings data are used for analyses in which earnings, age or number of jobs are variables, the two methods of questioning will yield significantly different results. Therefore, the second argument of the proponents

Table 1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN 1967 EARNINGS ESTIMATES BASED ON BROAD QUESTION AND WORK HISTORY INFORMATION

Difference between Po8itive Negative Cumulative estimates, in dollars difference8a differencesb absolute

No differenceo 47.0 $ 1- 99 25.0 18.8 58.4

100- 299 15.6 24.7 69.4 300- 499 15.6 11.8 76.5 500- 749 6.2 14.1 82.2 750- 999 4.7 5.9 85.1

1,000-1,499 9.4 16.5 92.2 1,500-1,999 15.6 5.9 97.5 2,000 or more 7.8 2.4 100.0

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Base 64 85 281

a Estimate based on broad question exceeded estimate based on work history. b Estimate based on work history exceeded estimate based on broad question. ? Of these persons 91 reported no earnings in 1967. Of the others 17 presented W-2 forms, 12 only presented

data for the work history approach and eight for the broad question approach, and four had jobs for which they were paid annually.




Table 2. REGRESSION OF BROAD QUESTION ESTIMATE OF EARNINGS MINUS WORK HISTORY ESTIMATE ON PERSONAL AND INTERVIEWER CHARACTERISTICSa

Independent variable Mean Regression coefficient

Interceptb 453.42 Broad question estimate 2511.83 0.06410 Nonwhiteo 50.2 126.10 Female, 59.1 -106.44 Number of household members 4.2 - 24.21 Not marriede 34.5 95.01 Age under 200 4.3 -455.44 Age 25-346 20.3 -399.79d Age 35_44a 18.9 -312.46 Age 45 and overe 46.3 -378.17d Education less than 9 yearse 33.1 -139.82 Education 9-11 years0 26.3 -137.95 Education 12 years' 29.2 -136.85 Number of jobs reported 0.9 -144.68d Male interviewer, 32.0 - 32.20 Interviewer and respondent 49.1 91.44

same sex0

AN =281, R =.097, F =1.89, P <.05; Standard error of the estimate =687.86; Standard error of the mean residual =41.03.

b The intercept represents persons witb no earnings who are married white males, have no dependents, are between 20 and 24 years old, completed at least one year of college, had no jobs in 1967, and were interviewed by a female interviewer.

? The binary variables take the values of zero and one. Their means represent the percentage of the sample who possess the characteristic.

d Significant at P <.05. e Significant at P <.01.

of the broad question approach is correct for average earnings estimates when the sample is representative of poor urban neighborhoods, as is the present sample, but incorrect for other uses of the data.

4.3 The Two Approaches Give Equally Accurate Estimates of Earnings

Finally, the two interview estimates were compared with employer reports of earnings to the Indiana Employment Security Division." The response errors from each questioning technique were calculated for the 1967 earnings of a sub- sample of 173 persons.12

As in other studies of response error [2, 12], the average error was small. The work history approach had a mean annual error of $46.67, while that from the broad question approach was only $38.57. The difference of only $8.10 between the average errors from the two approaches indicated again that the two approaches yield nearly identical results for average earnings statistics on persons

11 Since not all employment was covered by the Indiana Unemployment Insurance Act and therefore was not reported by employers, adjustments had to be made in the interview data. For persons with some noncovered employment the earnings from jobs for which there were no employer reports were subtracted from the total work history earnings estimate.

The broad question estimate was adjusted by multiplying it by the proportion of the work history earnings which were covered. This procedure assumed that the proportion of earnings in covered employment was accurately calculated in the work history.

12 Of the 281 sample members, 38 did not have, could not give or would not give their social security numbers. An additional 70 sample members only had employment not covered by the unemployment insurance program, thus preventing use of their interviews.



572 Journal of the American Statistical Association, June 1 970

from poverty areas. Therefore, the easier, cheaper broad question approach is preferable.

Homwever, as in the earlier study of response error in earnings information by the author [2, p. 732], the small average error was caused by very large off- setting positive and negative errors. The standard deviation of the response errors from the work history estimates was $623.49 and that of the broad question approach was $767.14. iVioreover, the distribution of the response errors indicated that 12.1 percent of the respondents made errors of $1,000 or more in answering the work history questions. Also, as in the author's earlier study [2, p. 735], the errors were founld to regress significantly on the age, the education, and the earnings of the respondents.

Because of the wide and systematic variations in the response errors, an analysis was conducted to determine if the choice of questioning technique would cause response errors of different sizes for particular groups of respondents. The differences between the response errors were regressed onl the sex, the race, the age, the education anld the earninlgs of the respondenits. These independent variables were selected because they are theoretically important determinants of earnings, as well as the characteristics of a sample population that are most often available to the researcher when he designs his study. Therefore, if differences in response errors were found to exist for one of these groups, the analysis would indicate which questioning technique was preferable. The researcher could theni design his questionnaire accordingly.

The dependent variable used in the analysis was the absolute value of the error resultinlg from the broad question approach minus the absolute response error using the work history approach. The difference between the absolute values of the errors was used instead of the difference between the actual response errors because the latter variable would be difficult to interpret. The latter variable treats smaller negative errors and larger positive errors (or larger negative and smaller positive errors) as identical.'3 Rather than demon- strating the relative response errors, it merely presents the differences betweenl the estimates of the two approaches (i.e., (A-C) - (B-C) = A-B). The difference between the absolute values, on the other hand, gives equal importance to positive and negative response errors. It demonstrates which questioning technique has the smallest average deviation from the true value for earnings.

13 For example, given the following three cases: Case EBQ EWH TV ERBQ ERWH ERBQ-ERwH IERBQ I- |ERwH I 1 $1,000 $2,000 $1,000 0 $1,000 -$1,000 -$1,000 2 1,000 0 1,000 0 -1,000 1,000 -1,000 3 2,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 0 1,000 1,000

where EBQ is estimated value using the broad question, Ewii is estimated value using the work history, TV is true value of earnings,

ERBQ is response error using the broad quiestion and calculated as EBQ -TV, and ERWH is response error in the work history estimate.

In both of the first two cases the broad question approach gives an answer that is correct wlhile there is a $1,000 error resulting from the work histories. In the first case the difference between the actual errors properly indicates that the error from the broad question approach is $1,000 smaller. In the second case, however, the error using the broad question approach appears to be $1,000 greater than that resulting from the use of the work history. This is the same reported error as is found in the third case where the broad question approach in fact does give an error that is greater. In contrast, the difference between the absolute values of the errors yields the same values for Cases 1 and 2 and a different value for Case 3.




Table 3. REGRESSION OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ABSOLUTE VALUES OF RESPONSE ERRORS FOR TWO QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES ON

COMMONLY AVAILABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF SURVEY POPULATIONSa

Variable Mean Regression coefficient

Interceptb 240.79 Broad question earnings estimatee 2164.19 0.0404e Nonwhited 46.2 80.29 Femaled 56.1 - 26.88 Age 25-34d 19.7 -120.83 Age 35-44d 14.5 -229.87 Age 45 and overd 51.4 -116.10 Education less than 9 yearsd 34.7 -165.10 Education 9-11 yearsd 26.6 -306.30e Education 12 yearsd 27.2 -269.07e

aN =173, R2 =.106, F =2.14, P <.05. Standard error of the estimate =486.96; Standard error of the mean residual =37.02.

b The intercept represents persons with no earnings, who are white males, under 25 years old and have completed at least one year of college.

c The estimate does not include earnings not covered by the Unemployment Insurance Act. d The binary variables take the values of zero and one. Their means indicate the percentage of the sample who

possess the characteristic. e Significant at P <.05.

Table 3 presents the results of the regression analysis of the absolute response errors, and Table 4 shows the relative response errors calculated from the coefficients in Table 3. On the basis of the equation it appears that for persons with some college education (and to a lesser extent those with only a grammar school education) and for persons with average or above average earnings the work history approach gave substantially smaller response errors. This seems especially true of young respondents, those under 25. For the poor who had completed some or all of high school but no college, however, the broad question approach was more accurate in obtaining earnings information.14 Thus, the third argument in favor of the broad question technique is correct, but only for this last group.

5. CONCLUSIONS

The findings presented here are mixed. For surveys dealing primarily with the poor, the broad question approach appears to be as accurate as is the work history mnethod. Thus, for surveys of urban, low income neighborhoods, such as was discussed here, the broad question and work history approaches give almost identical estimates of average earnings. Given the lower cost and the greater ease in its use, the broad question approach is definitely preferable for these surveys.

For surveys of higher income groups, however, the work history appears to

14 These findings are those which would normally be expected: the poor and less educated respondents appar- ently had more problems understanding and providing accurate answers to the relatively complicated work history questions and the interviewers under 25 appear to have communicated best using the work histories with respondents who were also under 25.




Table 4. AMOUNT BY WHICH RESPONSE ERROR USING BROAD QUESTION APPROACH EXCEEDS RESPONSE ERROR USING WORK HISTORY FOR

DIFFERENT TYPES OF RESPONDENTS BASED ON TABLE 3a

Estimated covered Education earnings using broad question Less than 9 Completed Completed Completed

approach and age years completed 9-11 years high school some college

EBQ=$1,000; age= Under 25 $ 116 $- 25 $ 12 $281 25-34 - 5 -146 -109 160 35-44 -114 -255 -218 51 45 and over 0 -141 -104 165

EBQ= $4, 000; age= Under 25 237 96 133 402 25-34 116 - 25 12 282 35-44 7 -134 - 97 173 45 and over 121 - 20 17 286

EBQ= $7, 000; age= Under 25 358 217 255 524 25-34 238 96 134 403 35-44 129 - 13 25 294 45 and over 242 101 138 407

EBQ=$10,000; age= Under 25 480 338 376 645 25-34 359 218 255 524 35-44 250 109 146 415 45 and over 363 222 259 528

a Positive values indicate the reduction in response error by using the work history approach rather than the broad question technique. Negative values indicate how much better estimates will be secured if the broad question is used. All table values are for wliite males. For nonwhite males, add $80, for nonwhite females add $53 and for white females subtract $27.

NOTE: Though this table presents the predicted values of the response error based on Table 3, the actual errors for a particular individual may differ considerably from these estimates. There was considerable unexplained residual variation as indicated by the high standard error of the estimate in Table 3.

provide more accurate estimates of earnings. The figures provided in Table 4 give an indication of the gains in accuracy from using the work history approach. These figures, of course, present only approximations of the magnitudes that other studies would find using the same technliques. The type and training of the interviewers and the questionnaire construction are particularly crucial to the accuracy of the work history approach. Presumably, interviewers better trained and more experienced than those used here could achieve more accurate results using the work history approach. Also, the questionnaire doubt- lessly could be improved. The estimates of Table 4, however, should help the researcher to weigh the trade-off between the greater expense and the increased care necessary to use the work history approach and its improved accuracy for surveys of middle income groups.

REFERENCES

[11 Borus, Michael E., The Economic Effectiveness of Retraining the Unemployed, Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Bostoni, 1966.




[21 , "Response Error in Survey Reports of Earnings Information," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 61(1966), 729-38.

[3] Ferber, Robert, The Reliability of Consumer Reports of Financial Assets and Debts, Studies in Consumer Savings Number 6, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1966.

[4] , et al., "Validation of Consumer Financial Characteristics: Common Stock," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 64 (1969), 415-32.

[51 Lamale, Helen H., Study of Consumer Expenditures, Incomes and Savings, Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959.

[61 Maynes, E. Scott, "Minimizing Response Error In Financial Data: The Possibilities," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 63 (1968), 214-27.

[7] Miller, Herman P., "An Appraisal of the 1950 Census Income Data," Jounal of the American Statistical Association, 48 (1953), 28-43.

[81 , Income Distribution in the United States, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966.

[91 Morgan, James N., Sirageldin, Ismail A., and Baerwaldt, Nancy, Productive Ameri- cans, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan, 1966.

[101 Neter, John and Waksberg, Joseph, Response Errors In Collection of Expenditures Data By Household Interviews: An Experimental Study, Technical Paper No. 11, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965.

[111 Parnes, Herbert S., Research on Labor Mobility: An Appraisal of Research Findings in the United States, New York: Social Science Research Council, 1954.

[121 Pritzer, Leon and Sands, Alfred, "The 1950 Census and the Post-Enumeration Sur- vey, in National Bureau of Economic Research, An Appraisal of the 1950 Census In- come Data, Vol. 23 of Studies in Income and Wealth, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, 207-38.

[131 Reiss, Albert J., Occupations and Social Status, New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.

[141 Sirken, Monroe G., Maynes, E. Scott, and Frechtling, John A., "The Survey of Con- sumer Finances and the Census Quality Check," in National Bureau of Economic Re- search, An Appraisal of the 1950 Census Income Data, Vol. 23 of Studies in Income and Wealth, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, 127-68.

[151 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Form CPS-1, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, March 1969.

[161 X U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1960, "Census Tracts-Fort Wayne," PC(1)-48, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1961.

[171 , U.S. Census of Population and Housing: 1960, "General Social and Economic Characteristics, United States Summary," Final report PC(1)-1C, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962.



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Response Error and Questioning Technique in Surveys of Earnings Information