Identify faking interviewers

What is it about?

The paper provides a relatively simple technique to identify faking interviewers in survey research. The technique can be implemented in an excel spreadsheet. A field experiment in India, where some interviewers were instructed to fake the data, shows that the method is 90% accurate at distinguishing between faking and non-faking interviewers.

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Why is it important?

Surveys through intermediaries happen in many contexts - whether it is research at the base of the pyramid or marketing research in developed countries. Sometimes, interviewers fake data in order to complete their assigned tasks faster. Using fake data in an analysis can lead to biased results. This method provides a simple fix to identify and thereby exclude faked data prior to analysis.