Mischievous Responders and Sexual Minority Youth Survey Data: A Brief History, Recent Methodological Advances, and Implications for Research and Practice

Cimpian, Joseph R.; Timmer, Jennifer D.

doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01661-7

Cited by 16 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Deliberate lying in survey responses has long been documented (Cimpian & Timmer, 2020;Fan et al, 2002), and some researchers attribute such behavior to intentional efforts to appear humorous, or to shock or upset (i.e., to "troll") survey administrators (Lopez & Hillygus, 2018). What is clear, is that a small subset of survey participants have a tendency to simultaneously claim to identify with low frequency identities, hold unlikely opinions, and frequently engage in atypical behaviors, and that controlling for such unlikely respondents can dramatically influence a study's results (Cimpian & Timmer, 2020;Fan et al, 2002;Lopez & Hillygus, 2018;Robinson-Cimpian, 2014). On the basis of such research, we suspect that questions concerning the use of pornographic magazines and to even greater extent the commission of sexual aggression may be attractive targets for exaggeration among malicious survey respondents.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the Role of Pornography Use in the Confluence Model Theory of Sexual Aggression

Kohut¹,

Fisher²

2020

Preprint

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The connection between pornography use and sexual violence remains an ongoing concern within and outside academia. The current research sought to test Confluence Model reasoning that pornography use will be most strongly related to sexual aggression among men who are high in the predisposing risk factors of hostile masculinity and impersonal sexuality. To this end, a sample of young adult (18-24 years of age) males from Mechanical Turk (N = 1,528) and two national samples of young adult Canadian males who were currently enrolled (N = 1,049) or not currently enrolled (N = 905) in post-secondary education completed self-report measures of pornography use, hostile masculinity, impersonal sexuality, and sexual aggression in an online survey. Results supported some aspects of Confluence Model theorizing but challenged others. When pornography use was operationalized with a contemporary approach that assessed use of all forms of pornography, the results did not confirm a positive relationship between pornography use and sexual aggression among men with high levels of hostile masculinity and impersonal sexuality. When operationalized as the use of pornographic magazines, a relatively uncommon contemporary form of pornography consumption, pornography use was found to be correlated with sexual aggression, and the magnitude of this association was larger among men who were high in either hostile masculinity or impersonal sexuality, depending on the sample. These discrepant findings serve as a challenge to causal explanations for previously published correlations of pornography use and sexual aggression and a warning about the non-equivalence of pornography use measures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the Role of Pornography Use in the Confluence Model Theory of Sexual Aggression

Kohut¹,

Fisher²

2020

Preprint

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“…We hypothesized that; a) there will be a high correlation between cleanliness practices and health outcomes, and b) taking problematic respondents out of the analytic sample will attenuate the association between cleanliness practices and health outcomes. As mentioned above, previous studies have shown that taking problematic respondents out of the analytic sample attenuates correlations (see Cimpian and Timmer, 2020). This is because problematic respondents tend to acquiesce to multiple unrelated survey items, artificially driving up correlations between unrelated events.. We thus hypothesized that the association between cleanliness practices and health outcomes will be very high among problematic respondents and will be very low among non-problematic respondents.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…One of the major threats to validity in survey research comes from participants who are inattentive, respond randomly to survey questions (Kim et al, 2018; King, Kim, and McCabe, 2018; see Chandler, Paolacci and Hauser, 2020 for review), or are ‘mischievous’, providing responses that are intentionally false or misleading (Fan et al, 2006; Robinson-Cimpian, 2014; Kramer, Rubin and Coster, 2014; Fish and Russell, 2018; Kaltiala-Heino and Lindberg, 2019; Li, Follingstad. Campe, and Chahal, 2020; see Cimpian et al, 2020 for a review). Inattentive and mischievous respondents (collectively referred to in this report as ‘problematic respondents’) can bias the results of surveys by dramatically inflating point estimates and creating illusory associations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, the participants who provided false information also endorsed extreme responses on a wide range of behaviors such as alcohol consumption, leading to inflated and illusory between-groups disparities. A reanalysis of the Add Health data after having taken these respondents out of the analytic sample led the authors to conclude that several original reported disparities were “substantially overstated,” and led to retractions of published reports (see Cimpian and Timmer, 2020; Fan et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Did people really drink bleach to prevent COVID-19? A tale of problematic respondents and a guide for measuring rare events in survey data

Litman

Rosen

Ronsezweig

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Society is becoming increasingly dependent on survey research. However, surveys can be impacted by participants who are non-attentive, respond randomly to survey questions, and misrepresent who they are and their true attitudes. The impact that such respondents can have on public health research has rarely been systematically examined. In this study we examine whether Americans began to engage in dangerous cleaning practices to avoid Covid-19 infection. Prior findings reported by the CDC have suggested that people began to engage in highly dangerous cleaning practices during the Covid-19 pandemic, including ingesting household cleansers such as bleach. In a series of studies totaling close to 1400 respondents, we show that 80-90% of reports of household cleanser ingestion are made by problematic respondents. These respondents report impossible claims such as ‘recently having had a fatal heart attack’ and ‘eating concrete for its iron content’ at a similar rate to ingesting household cleaners. Additionally, respondents’ frequent misreading or misinterpreting the intent of questions accounted for the rest of such claims. Once inattentive, mischievous, and careless respondents are taken out of the analytic sample we find no evidence that people ingest cleansers to prevent Covid-19 infection. The relationship between dangerous cleaning practices and health outcomes also becomes non-significant once problematic respondents are taken out of the analytic sample. These results show that reported ingestion of household cleaners and other similar dangerous practices are an artifact of problematic respondent bias. The implications of these findings for public health and medical survey research, as well as best practices for avoiding problematic respondents in surveys are discussed.

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“…For example, estimated declines in sexual experience in the YRBS may be influenced by changing patterns of social desirability for this behavior. Additionally, being an in-school, self-administered survey, the YRBS may be more susceptible than the NSFG to motivated misreporting of sensitive behaviors, whether because of social desirability or other types of peer influence [32][33][34]. Indeed, alcohol use-another sensitive behavior for adolescents-also has a higher prevalence in the YRBS than the NSFG.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Comparability of estimates and trends in adolescent sexual and contraceptive behaviors from two national surveys: National Survey of Family Growth and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey

et al. 2021

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Objective To compare adolescents’ reports of sexual and contraceptive behaviors between the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). Methods For each survey, we estimated the year- and sex-specific prevalence of sexual and contraceptive behaviors among a comparably defined sample of US respondents ages 15–19 currently attending high school. We used logistic regression to test for changes in prevalence from 2007–2019 and conducted sensitivity analyses to investigate between-survey differences. Results We found differences in both prevalence and trends between the YRBS and NSFG when limited to a comparably defined sample. Compared to the NSFG, adolescents in the YRBS were more likely to report being sexually experienced, less likely to report use of prescription methods for both sexes, and less likely to report condoms among males. Only the YRBS estimated significant declines in sexual experience for both sexes, and significant increases in prescription methods and declines in condom use among males. Differences between surveys in the prevalence of specific contraceptive methods reflected greater combined use of methods in the NSFG. We identified differences in question-wording and other aspects that may influence these differential patterns. Conclusions The NSFG and YRBS produced inconsistent prevalence estimates and trends for sexual and contraceptive behaviors among in-school adolescents. Further efforts to improve these national surveillance systems are critical to inform policy and research efforts that support adolescent sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing.

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Mischievous Responders and Sexual Minority Youth Survey Data: A Brief History, Recent Methodological Advances, and Implications for Research and Practice

Cited by 16 publications

References 21 publications

Revisiting the Role of Pornography Use in the Confluence Model Theory of Sexual Aggression

Revisiting the Role of Pornography Use in the Confluence Model Theory of Sexual Aggression

Did people really drink bleach to prevent COVID-19? A tale of problematic respondents and a guide for measuring rare events in survey data

Comparability of estimates and trends in adolescent sexual and contraceptive behaviors from two national surveys: National Survey of Family Growth and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey

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