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Automatic Identification of Faked and Fraudulent Interviews in the German SOEP

Christin Schäfer, +3 more
- Vol. 125, Iss: 1, pp 183-193
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TLDR
Two new tools for the identification of faked interviews in surveys are presented, one method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey.
Abstract: 
Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper presents two new tools for the identification of faked interviews in surveys. One method is based on Benford's Law, and the other exploits the empirical observation that fakers most often produce answers with less variability than could be expected from the whole survey. We focus on fabricated data, which was taken out of the survey before the data was disseminated to external users. For two samples, the resulting rankings of the interviewers with respect to their cheating behavior are given. For both methods all of the evident fakers are identified.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Not the First Digit!: Using Benford's Law to Detect Fraudulent Scientific Data

Andreas Diekmann
- 16 May 2007 - 
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the use of the Benford distribution as a standard by checking the frequencies of the nine possible first and ten possible second digits in published statistical estimates and conducted experiments in which subjects were asked to fabricate statistical estimates (regression coefficients).
Journal ArticleDOI

Fact and Fiction in EU‐Governmental Economic Data

Bernhard Rauch, +3 more
- 01 Aug 2011 - 
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a Benford test to investigate the quality of macroeconomic data relevant to the deficit criteria reported to Eurostat by the EU member states, and they found that the data reported by Greece showed the greatest deviation from Benford's law among all euro states.
Posted Content

Not the First Digit! Using Benford’s Law to Detect Fraudulent Scientific Data

Andreas Diekmann
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the use of the Benford distribution as a standard by checking digit frequencies in published statistical estimates and conducted experiments in which subjects were asked to fabricate statistical estimates (regression coefficients).
Journal ArticleDOI

Does Benford’s Law hold in economic research and forecasting?

Stefan Günnel, +1 more
- 01 Aug 2009 - 
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the distribution of regression coefficients and standard errors in research papers, published in Empirica and Applied Economics Letters, and analyzed forecasts of GDP growth and CPI inflation in Germany.

A statistical approach to detect interviewer falsification of survey data

Sebastian Bredl, +2 more
TL;DR: The authors used cluster analysis to identify interviewers who falsify their work assignments and combined several indicators to classify interviewers based solely on the data collected, which is superior to the application of a single indicator such as Benford's law.