A Comparison of Recall Error in Recreational Fisheries Surveys with One‐ and Two‐Month Reference Periods

Abstract

AbstractMany fisheries monitoring programs use self‐administered surveys to collect data, which are subject to recall error. Recall error occurs when respondents inaccurately remember past events due to telescoping (remembering events more recently or further back in time than they occurred) or omission error (forgetting events altogether). Previous research on the effects of variable reference periods in fisheries surveys has been inconclusive due to difficulty in disentangling method effects from recall error and in determining whether estimates from shorter recall periods are less biased or more subject to telescoping. The National Marine Fisheries Service has developed a new household mail survey, the Fishing Effort Survey (FES), in which anglers are asked to recall cumulative fishing effort over the past 2 months, from which estimates of saltwater fishing effort are produced. Here, we examined how the length of the reference period may affect the FES in four U.S. states by comparing effort estimates to two feasible alternatives: (1) a survey administered monthly with both a 1‐ and 2‐month reference period (wherein respondents were asked to recall fishing effort for each of the past 2 months individually); and (2) a survey administered monthly with a 1‐month reference period. To further explore bias in the designs, we compared total effort, fishing prevalence, and mean trips per household estimates derived from the two experimental surveys. We found no significant differences between the FES and experimental survey estimates. However, we found evidence that multiple reference periods in a single survey may reduce bias for 1‐month estimates. Increased understanding of (1) techniques that can reduce recall bias and (2) the trade‐offs of shorter or longer reference periods will ultimately help fisheries survey designers more accurately weigh bias against survey costs and improve the quality of data used to inform management decisions.