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Friday 19th July 2013, 11:00 - 12:30, Room: No. 16

Data Collection and Analysis - Other

Chair Ms Margarida Albuquerque (ESADE)

Paper Details

1. The influence of respondent incentives on item nonresponse and measurement error in a web survey

Mr Barbara Felderer (Institute for Employment Research)
Professor Frauke Kreuter (Institute for Employment Research)
Professor Joachim Winter (University of Munich)

Even though a sampled person may agree to participate in a survey, she may not provide answers to all of the questions asked or might not answer questions correctly.
It is well known that incentives can effectively be used to decrease unit nonresponse. The question we are analyzing is whether incentives are able to decrease item nonresponse and measurement error as well.
To study the effect of incentives on item nonresponse and measurement error, an experiment was conducted with participants of a web survey. In addition to an incentive for participation, an extra prepaid incentive ranging from 0.50 Euro to 4.50 Euro was given to some respondents towards the end of the questionnaire. At the same time, respondents were requested to think hard about the answers to the next questions. In this experiment there are two reference groups: one group received the request but no incentive and the other did not receive any request or incentive.
We approach our research questions in three steps: Our first analysis focuses on the effect of incentives on the proportion of "don't know"s and "no answer"s. In a second step, we look at the amount of rounding and heaping. In the third step, we examine measurement error for two variables (income, unemployment benefit recipiency) by linking the survey data to German administrative records and comparing administrative records and survey response.
Comparisons across the different incentive groups will allow for an assessment of the effectiveness of incentives on item nonresponse.


2. regional price bservatory

Miss Francesca Paradisi (Istat)
Miss Cristina Carbonari (Istat)
Miss Bianca Maria Martelli (Istat)

Since 2003 the regional office of Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in Umbria has been involved in an experimental project named 'Regional Price Observatory'. The work is conducted by a number of actors besides Istat: the Regional Administration of Umbria, the Department of Economics, Finance and Statistics of the University of Perugia, the consumer protection organizations, and some Umbrian Municipalities. The project is intended as a contribution to the interdisciplinary study of consumer behaviour and provides useful information for understanding how consumer take their own purchasing decisions. The research adopts an innovative methodology suited to monitor prices' level and purchase behaviour in a different way as compared to the price data used to build the well-known inflation indexes. More specifically, original data are monthly collected directly from the sampled retail selling points highlighting minimum, maximum, and average prices of a set of most purchased goods focusing on food, beverages, and home care products, that is products with "low cognitive involvement" (convenience goods"). Furthermore some selected products grouping better allows to detect how and where consumer show higher/lower attention for saving and to the changes occurred over the time..The work is part of the research field known as the theory of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in particular, primarily refers to the model of von Alvensleben dealing with the behaviour of the user of foodstuffs.




3. The emotionally competent highway from IQ to performance: Testing an interaction effect model.

Ms Margarida Albuquerque (ESADE, Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain))
Dr Joan Manuel Batista-foguet (ESADE, Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain))
Professor Ricard Serlavos (ESADE, Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain))
Dr Richard Boyatzis (Case Western Reserve University (United States))

The majority of studies inspecting how emotional intelligence (EI) affects performance do so by testing additive effects. Nevertheless, linear effect models of EI may be overly simplistic (Côté & Miners, 2006), as they miss out on the essence of emotional intelligence: the intertwining of emotion, cognition and decision-making processes. Thus, building on Van Rooy &Viswesvaran (2004)'s suggestion that moderating effects may exist we design and test a model whereby EI moderates the relationship between IQ and academic performance.
Amongst the ever increasing number of EI measures - since the ability-based model by Salovey & Mayer (1997) to EI traits - we choose to assess EI through its most visible manifestation, through behaviour, as in competencies and attitudes. For this matter we use 360º assessments of the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI; Boyatzis, 2009).
The present study, based on a sample of 800 graduate students over the period 2006-12, uses structural equation modelling techniques to test an interaction model wherein emotional competencies act as moderators of general intelligence (g, hereby measured by GMAT total, quantitative and verbal scores), in affecting academic performance. The main purpose of this paper is to test an original model whereby EI acts as a strategic complement to cognitive intelligence, positively moderating its effect on performance, while bringing support to ESCI's predictive validity. Additionally, we also address a few methodological issues, such as whether survey instruments may succeed at capturing actual behaviour rather than attitudes towards socially desirable behaviours (Saris et. al, 2007).