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Field Methods, Vol. 20, No. 1, 26-45 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1525822X07309356

Can We Trust an Adult's Estimate of Parental School Attainment? Disentangling Social Desirability Bias and Random Measurement Error

Ricardo Godoy

Brandeis University

Victoria Reyes-García

Environmental Sciences and Technology Institute (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain) Brandeis University

Susan Tanner

University of Georgia

William R. Leonard

Northwestern University

Thomas W. McDade

Northwestern University

Tomás Huanca

Centro Boliviano de Investigación y de Desarrollo Socio Integral (CBIDSI), Beni, Bolivia

Researchers often need to know the parental school attainment of adult subjects. When researchers cannot ask parents about their school attainment, they must ask adult offspring about the school attainment of their parents. We assess the accuracy of answers provided by adults about the school attainment of their parents with data from a native Amazonian society in Bolivia (Tsimane'). Offspring overestimate the school attainment of their parents. They also report inaccurately other human capital attributes of their parents (e.g., writing skills, fluency speaking Spanish, practical indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants). Results mesh with findings from the United States about the lack of reliability of adults' self-reports about parental school attainment and with prior research among the Tsimane' suggesting significant misreporting of other outcomes (e.g., age, income, parental height).

Key Words: Amazon • Bolivia • informant accuracy • Tsimane' • reliability coefficient • education • human capital • social desirability bias


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