Topic: Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity in Self-Reported Well-Being

Lecturer: Assistant researcher, Jiannan Zhou, School of Economics, Shandong University

Time: 12:00-13:00 p.m. May 25th, 2023

Venue: B336 Zhixin Building, Central Campus

Abstract: Analyses of self-reported-well-being (SWB) survey data may be confounded if people use response scales differently. We use calibration questions, designed to have the same objective answer across respondents, to measure general (i.e., common across questions) scale-use heterogeneity. In a sample of ~3,350 MTurkers, we find substantial such heterogeneity that is correlated with demographics. We develop a theoretical framework and econometric approaches to adjust for this heterogeneity. A key simplifying assumption, motivated by our evidence, is that different respondents' scale-use functions are linear transformations of each other. We apply our new estimators in several standard SWB applications. Adjusting for general-scale-use heterogeneity changes results in some cases, and our framework predicts when adjustment will matter.