Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Accounting for Individual-Specific Reliability of Self-Assessed Measures of Economic Preferences and Personality Traits 
Author-Name: Thomas Dohmen
Author-Email: tdohmen@uni-bonn.de
Author-Name: Tomas Jagelka
Author-Email: tjagelka@uni-bonn.de
Classification-JEL: D90, C83, C81
Keywords: Reliability, measurement error, personality traits, economic preferences, self-assessments

Abstract: Measures based on self-assessments, which are increasingly important in empirical economic
research, are plagued by measurement error. This paper presents the first attempt at measuring both 
revealed and self-reported reliability of individuals’ answers on self-reports of latent characteristics. 
We show that measurement error on self-reports relevant to economists is heterogeneous across individuals 
and can be reasonably approximated by a distribution with twounobserved types. We propose a straightforward 
survey question which allows to distinguish individuals who give highly reliable answers from those who 
do not, using cross-sectional data. Wedemonstrate that it predicts revealed individual reliability over and 
above all measured characterises, survey conditions, and experimental treatments. We show how our simple 
self-reported reliability measure can be used to cost-effectively reduce attenuation bias in estimates of 
cognitive and non-cognitive determinants of high school GPA, college graduation, unemployment, and life satisfaction. 
Without requiring panel data, the achieved correction is similar to some of themost effective reduced-form 
theory-based approaches in the existing literature. Finally, we clarify the role of effort and self-knowledge in 
generating measurement error and propose a simple model which rationalizes our findings.
Note: 
Length: 52
Creation-Date: 2023-03
Revision-Date: 
File-URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp397
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:CRCTR224_2023_397