Replication Data for: Racing the Clock: Using Response Time as a Proxy for Attentiveness on Self-Administered Surveys

Internet-based surveys have expanded public opinion data collection at the expense of monitoring respondent attentiveness, potentially compromising data quality. Researchers now have to evaluate attentiveness ex-post. We propose a new proxy for attentiveness -- response-time attentiveness clustering (RTAC) -- that uses dimension reduction and an unsupervised clustering algorithm to leverage variation in response time between respondents and across questions. We advance the literature theoretically arguing that the existing dichotomous classification of respondents as fast or attentive is insufficient and neglects slow and inattentive respondents. We validate our theoretical classification and empirical strategy against commonly used proxies for survey attentiveness. In contrast to other methods for capturing attentiveness, RTAC allows researchers to collect attentiveness data unobtrusively without sacrificing space on the survey instrument. This replication package provides the data and analysis code for all the analysis on the paper.

基于互联网的问卷调查在扩大民意数据收集规模的同时，却疏于对受访者作答专注度的监测，这可能会损害数据质量。当前研究者不得不于事后对作答专注度开展评估。我们提出了一种全新的作答专注度代理指标——作答时长专注度聚类（response-time attentiveness clustering, RTAC），该方法借助降维与无监督聚类算法，利用不同受访者间以及不同题目间的作答时长差异构建指标。我们从理论层面推进了相关研究的发展，指出当前将受访者简单划分为“作答快速”与“作答专注”两类的二分法存在局限，且忽略了“作答缓慢却不专注”的受访者群体。我们通过与常用的问卷专注度代理指标进行对照验证，证实了本研究的理论分类与实证策略的有效性。与其他获取作答专注度数据的方法不同，RTAC能够在不占用问卷版面空间的前提下，隐蔽地收集专注度相关数据。本复现包提供了论文中所有分析所需的数据集与分析代码。