This application proposes a supplement to the NBER's ongoing program project on the Economics of Aging. In particular, it proposes a continuation of the subproject on """"""""Improving Data Measurement in Surveys of the Elderly"""""""" for the final two years of the current PO1 award period. Accurate responses to surveys of elderly populations are essential for studying the health and economic circumstances of older persons and for tracking the impact of health and economic policy on economic status and behavior. To date, this project has developed and implemented experimental Internet survey techniques and has applied these techniques in evaluating and improving survey data. Project investigators have also studied in depth the limitations and errors and biases that may exist in survey data and how they relate to questionnaire format, sequencing and context. The proposed supplement project would extend this work, focusing on data about expectations and perceptions of future health, mortality and financial risks. The continuation of the subproject will involve the conduct and analysis of a new set of experimental surveys, which we have labeled the Retirement Perspectives Surveys (RPS). These surveys will include both mail-out and Internet components, using a sample of AARP members. The new surveys will explore in detail people's subjective perceptions of their future health, mortality, and financial risks, so that these perceptions can be related to how people behave--the decisions that they make--as they age. The RPS surveys will also draw on the special capabilities of the project's Internet Virtual Laboratory (IVLab) to vary format and sequencing and content of questions so that any biases resulting from these design features can be better understood. In addition, the Internet version of the RPS will be complemented with traditional mail surveys so that self-selection into the Internet can be evaluated, and so that the response variation across survey type can be explored. An auxiliary goal of the continuing project is to further develop the IVLab software for Internet experiments and to provide an easy-to-use implementation of experimental Internet surveys to the research community.
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