The Quick and the Careless: The Construct Validity of Page Time as a Measure of Insufficient Effort Responding to Surveys

Abstract

Several recent studies have examined the prevention, causes, and consequences of insufficient effort responding (IER) to surveys. Scientific progress in this area, however, rests on the availability of construct-valid IER measures. In the current paper we describe the potential merits of the page time index, which is computed by counting the number of questionnaire pages to which a participant has responded more quickly than two seconds per item (see Huang et al., 2012). We conducted three studies (total N = 1,056) to examine the page time index's construct validity. Across these studies, we found that page time converged highly with other IER indices, that it was sensitive to an experimental manipulation warning participants to respond carefully, and that it predicted the extent to which participants were unable to recognize item content. We also found that page time's validity was superior to that of total completion time and that the two-seconds-per-item rule yielded a construct-valid page time score for items of various word lengths. Given its apparent validity, we provide practical recommendations for the use of the page time index.