New Frontiers in Preventing, Detecting, and Remediating Fabrication in Survey Research

Date: 

Friday, February 13, 2015, 8:30am to 12:00pm

Location: 

1730 Cambridge St., Belfer Case Study Room, S020
New Frontiers in Preventing, Detecting, and Remediating Fabrication in Survey Research Presented by: The New England Chapter, American Association for Public Opinion Research The American Statistical Association The Harvard Program on Survey Research **Please note that breakfast will begin at 8:30am, followed by welcome remarks by 9am. Event Overview: This half day mini-conference will explore new ideas in preventing, detecting, and remediating fabrication in survey research. Presentations, discussion, and Q&A will focus on both practical and theoretical considerations in addressing fabrication in today's challenging survey environment. Two of the three presentations will focus specifically on international survey research, where anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is often the greatest, and where prevention and detection are the most difficult. Speakers for this event include: Gina Faranda - Director, Office of Opinion Research, U.S. Department of State Michael Robbins - Project Director, Arab Barometer Rita Thissen - Sr. Research Programmer/Analyst, RTI International Discussants: Fritz Scheuren, NORC Alan Zaslavsky, Harvard Medical School The event is free and open to the public. This is part of a 2014-15 series of events and articles exploring new frontiers in preventing, detecting, and remediating fabrication in survey research. The first event, held in December, 2014, focused on interviewer-level fabrication and also touched on evidence of apparent machine assisted fabrication, where a computer is used to generate data, as opposed to more traditional "curbstoning". This event is currently being written up by the panelists for submission to the Statistical Journal of the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS). The IAOS recently published an article by Peter Winker exploring a new method of detecting fabrication using synthetic data. Another event is planned for June with the Washington Statistical Society, and is in the planning stages. And a session on fabrication was accepted for the Total Survey Error conference in Baltimore, MD, to be held in September 2015. Partial support for this event is provided to the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University through the Eric C. Mindich fund for conferences in experimental social sciences. To sign up, go to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-frontiers-in-preventing-detecting-and-r...