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Public Opinion Quarterly 57:165-190 (1993)
© 1993 American Association for Public Opinion Research

"MY WIFE KNOWS BEST" A COMPARISON OF EVENT DATING ACCURACY BETWEEN THE WIFE, THE HUSBAND, THE COUPLE, AND THE BELGIUM POPULATION REGISTER

NADIA AURIAT, obtained her M.A. in sociology

McGill University

The problem of memory bias in retrospective data has been studied for short-term retrospective recall and for frequently occurring events, but little has been written on how questionnaire design can improve memory of personal events over a very long retrospective time period. This study offers a new approach to the problem by using a sample survey conducted in Belgium that allows the comparison of recall accuracy not only between the husband and the wife but also the couple together through the use of National Population Register data. The sample data support findings from certain psychological experiments that respondents' errors in event dating are generally in years, and not in months, and furthermore that this pattern is not general and is related to the event itself. Subsequently, the year of the birth of a child, which has an annual significance, is generally recalled accurately; the year of a change of residence, however, is often erroneous. Results of the log-linear models show that the odds of recalling an incorrect year of a move are significantly decreased if an event with annual significance occurred around the same time period. Design of retrospective questionnaires should take into account the fact that time units are not recalled equally for differing autobiographical events, and that dating accuracy could be improved through use of parallel event questioning. Correlations between dating errors and omissions, and the possibility of a "chain of errors" in responses, are also examined.


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