On the quality of reinterview data with applications to the current population survey

Abstract

The Current Population Survey (CPS) reinterview sample consists of two subsamples: (a) a sample of CPS households is reinterviewed and the discrepancies between the reinterview responses and the original interview responses are reconciled for the purpose of obtaining more accurate responses (i.e., response bias estimates), and (b) a sample of CPS households, nonoverlapping with sample (a), is reinterviewed "independently" of the original interview for the purpose of estimating simple response variance (SRV). In this article a model and estimation procedure are proposed for obtaining estimates of SRV from subsample (a) as well as the customary estimates of SRV from subsample (b). In this way, an improved estimator of SRV that combines data from both subsamples can be computed. Additionally, under conditions that are usually satisfied in practice, several inequalities involving statistics computed from both subsamples are derived. These inequalities can be used to check the validity of the reinterview assumptions and the quality of the estimates of SRV and response bias from the reinterview program. Data from the CPS reinterview program for both subsamples (a) and (b) are analyzed both (1) to illustrate the methodology and (2) to check the validity of the CPS reinterview data. Our results indicate that data from subsample (a) are not consistent with the data from subsample (b) and provide convincing evidence that errors in subsample (a) are the source of the inconsistency.