What Did They Say? Respondent Identity, Question Framing and the Measurement of Employment
基于印度农村调查数据，研究受访者身份（自报vs代理报告）和问题框架（详细活动问题vs单一问题）如何影响就业估计，发现详细模块显著提高女性就业率，而男性代理报告低估女性就业。
Abstract Using data from a primary survey conducted in rural India, this paper examines how two key survey design features—respondent identity and question framing—affect employment estimates. First, it estimates the causal impact of (a) replacing a single weekly employment question with a set of detailed activity-specific questions, and (b) changing the reference period from a week to individual days. The detailed module yields significantly higher estimates of women’s employment with no corresponding effect for men. Second, using spousal respondent pairs, the paper finds that proxy-reports by men significantly underestimate women’s employment while men's employment estimates do not differ between self- and proxy- reports. Within different types of employment however there are significant deviations for both genders. Intra-household analysis suggests misreporting is driven by asymmetric information and gender norms. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of self-reporting and detailed questions for accurately measuring employment with implications for improving survey design in resource-constrained contexts.