Investigator Characteristics and Respondent Behavior in Online Surveys. Issue 1 (25th March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: White, Ariel; Strezhnev, Anton; Lucas, Christopher; Kruszewska, Dominika; Huff, Connor
• Is Part Of: Journal of experimental political science. Volume 5:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 56
• Page End: 67
• Publication Date: 2018-03-25
• Subjects: Gender, -- race, -- online surveys, -- social desirability bias, -- demand effects, -- Mechanical Turk; Political science -- Periodicals; Political science -- Research -- Periodicals; Political science -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 320.0724
• DOI: 10.1017/XPS.2017.25
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2052-2630

Abstract

Abstract: Prior research demonstrates that responses to surveys can vary depending on the race, gender, or ethnicity of the investigator asking the question. We build upon this research by empirically testing how information about researcher identity in online surveys affects subject responses. We do so by conducting an experiment on Amazon's Mechanical Turk in which we vary the name of the researcher in the advertisement for the experiment and on the informed consent page in order to cue different racial and gender identities. We fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference in how respondents answer questions when assigned to a putatively black/white or male/female researcher.