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Attention Not Enough? Why Single Survey Screeners Fall Short in Political Studies
Insights from the Field
attention
representation
self-administered surveys
Methodology
AJPS
3 Stata files
8 datasets
3 text files
Dataverse
Separating the Shirkers from the Workers? Making Sure Respondents Pay Attention on Self-Administered Surveys was authored by Adam Berinsky, Michele F. Margolis and Michael W. Sances. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2014.

Surveys require attentive respondents. The article introduces "Screeners" as a tool to identify lack of attention but argues they have limitations.

💡 What Are Screeners?

Screeners are measures designed to detect survey respondents who aren't paying attention. They help reduce noisy data by flagging unreliable answers.

🔍 Single vs Multiple Items:

The study finds that relying on just one Screener question isn't ideal for ensuring data quality. Using multiple questions provides more reliable results and better captures inattentive respondents.

📊 Political Significance:

When survey respondents pass Screeners, their characteristics often reflect political interests or concerns—this affects how we interpret and generalize survey findings.

⚖️ Balancing Validity Goals:

The recommendation is clear: Use multiple Screener items. This approach allows researchers to balance internal validity (excluding unreliable data) with external validity by reporting results conditionally on different attention levels.

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American Journal of Political Science
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