Error and Accuracy in the General Social Survey Items on Voluntary Associations

• In Event: 568 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Volunteering and Voluntary Associations

Abstract

Since their introduction in 1972, the General Social Survey (GSS) voluntary association questions have been used extensively in social scientific research. Researchers generally assume that these respondent self-reports of association memberships are accurate but their measurement has never been assessed. Respondent characteristics are known to influence the accuracy of other self-report variables such as self-reported health, voting, or test scores. In this paper, we investigate whether substantial measurement error occurs in self-reports of voluntary association memberships. We use the 2004 GSS questions on voluntary associations which include a novel resource: the actual organization names listed by respondents. We find that the widely-used voluntary association classification scheme contains significant amounts of measurement error overall, especially within certain categories. Using a multilevel logistic regression, we predict accuracy of response nested within respondents and interviewers. We find that certain respondent characteristics, including some used in research on voluntary associations, influence respondent accuracy. Inaccurate and/or incorrect measurement will affect the statistics and conclusions drawn from the data on voluntary associations.

Authors

• Robyn Alexandra Keith, University of Texas-Austin

• Pamela M. Paxton, University of Texas