Measuring Household Spending and Payment Habits: The Role of 'Typical' and 'Specific' Time Frames in Survey Questions

• Activity Number: 590
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Marco Angrisani*+ and Arie Kapteyn and Scott Schuh
• Companies: RAND Corporation and RAND Corporation and Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
• Keywords: Survey question design ; Time frame ; Recall period ; Consumer choice

Abstract

We have fielded an experimental module in the American Life Panel (ALP) where we ask individuals to report the number of their purchases and the amount spent by debit cards, cash, credit cards, and personal checks. The experimental design features several stages of randomization. First, three different groups of sample participants are randomly assigned to an entry month (July, August, or September, 2011) and are interviewed 5 times, at intervals of 3 months. Second, for each method of payment a sequence of questions elicits spending behavior during a day, week, month, and year. At the time of the first interview, this sequence is randomly assigned to refer to specific time spans (e.g. last week) or to typical time spans (e.g. typical week). In all subsequent interviews, a specific sequence becomes a typical sequence and vice versa. In this paper, we analyze the data from this experiment. We show that the type (specific or typical) and length of recall periods greatly influence household reporting behavior. Differences between specific and typical periods decrease with the length of the reference time frame.