Abstract
Unfavorable past experience as participant in social research may lead subjects to refuse to participate in subsequent investigations or to respond in a biased way. The results indicate that persons with multiple research experience either do participate early in the survey campaign, or probably not at all. Respondents without research experience or without recent research experience are more prone to refuse and need the encouragement of follow-up contacts. Although research experience (as measured by the number of times one has previously participated in research) was related with responses on substantial items significantly more than chance, and thus may cause response bias, the extent of the bias was not large.
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This paper was written while the author was a Fulbrght visiting professor at the Departments of Rural Sociology and Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.
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Nederhof, A.J. Effects of research experience of respondents. Qual Quant 20, 277–284 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00227432
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00227432