Miscellany: The Influence of Prototype Values on the Validity of Studies Using Time Estimates

Dan Zakay, Joseph Cherian and Jacob Hornik

Surveys that use self-reports of time-based activities might suffer from a response tendency to round values.
  

The Influence of Prototypic Values on the Validity of Studies Using Time Estimates

Jacob Hornik Tel-Aviv University and The University of Chicago, Joseph Cherian University of Illinois at Chicago and Dan Zakay Tel-Aviv University

Introduction

Surveys that use self-reports of time-based activities might suffer from a response tendency to round values. Evidence presented in this paper shows that temporal reports contain a rounding bias, which means that prototypic decimal digits such as 0 and 5 are overused. This bias is especially severe for larger values, for hurried data collection methods and retrospective reports.

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