FIND DATA: By Author | Journal | Sites   ANALYZE DATA: Help with R | SPSS | Stata | Excel   WHAT'S NEW? US Politics | Int'l Relations | Law & Courts
   FIND DATA: By Author | Journal | Sites   WHAT'S NEW? US Politics | IR | Law & Courts
If this link is broken, please report as broken. You can also submit updates (will be reviewed).
Insights from the Field

Screeners Could Enhance Political Science Data Quality


screeners for attention
item-response theory
survey standardization
Methodology
PSR&M
3 R files
1 Stata files
1 text files
1 datasets
Dataverse
Using Screeners to Measure Respondent Attention on Self-Administered Surveys: Which Items and How Many? was authored by Christopher Warshaw, Adam J. Berinsky, Michele F. Margolis and Michael W. Sances. It was published by Cambridge in PSR&M in 2021.

### Improving Survey Reliability

New research provides guidance on effectively using screener questions to identify inattentive respondents during self-administered surveys—a common problem that introduces noise into datasets.

### Key Findings from Item-Response Theory

Using just four carefully selected screeners—specifically two grid and two multiple choice questions—can successfully pinpoint un attentive participants.

This approach helps reduce noisy responses, making correlations stronger between survey items. As a result, political science researchers can avoid null findings caused by inattentive answering.

### Practical Application

Our results enable the standardization of screener implementation across future surveys—a crucial step for improving data quality and reliability.

data
Find on Google Scholar
Find on JSTOR
Find on CUP
Political Science Research & Methods
Podcast host Ryan