Panel Conditioning Effects on Mortality: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experimental Study

The research project will advance understanding of the consequences for Americans of participating in surveys that re-interview them on many occasions across their entire lives, especially surveys that ask questions about health, health behaviors, and health care. Evidence suggests that participating in surveys can impact an individual's health, either by communicating new health information or by causing health-related changes in behaviors. Prior research, however, has not examined the relationship between survey participation and respondents' longevity. This project will address that question by conducting an experimental study using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Public policy makers and researchers rely heavily on data in which the same people are repeatedly interviewed over time. The results of this project will help policy makers and researchers understand and improve the accuracy of their data. A graduate student will be involved throughout the project. Results will be disseminated to the research community and the broader public.

This project will examine experimentally the effects of panel conditioning on adult mortality. The project will evaluate the extent to which repeatedly answering survey questions (including questions about health behaviors/outcomes and/or aspects of people's lives that are known to correlate strongly with health) influences the timing of respondents' death. The project also will determine whether mortality effects from panel conditioning are distributed evenly across the population or whether they vary systematically depending on respondents' background characteristics (e.g., gender, family socioeconomic background, educational performance). In 1957, the state of Wisconsin administered surveys to all 33,596 graduating high school seniors. One third of them were selected strictly at random for follow-up and have become the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study cohort. The project will achieve its research objectives by comparing the mortality outcomes of people in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study panel (who have completed multiple, lengthy surveys about health) to those who have never been re-interviewed since 1957.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.