Can we turn shirkers into workers?

Abstract

Survey researchers increasingly employ attention checks to identify inattentive respondents and reduce noise. Once inattentive respondents are identified, however, researchers must decide whether to drop such respondents, thus threatening external validity, or keep such respondents, thus threatening internal validity. In this article, we ask whether there is a third way: can inattentive respondents be induced to pay attention? Using three different strategies across three studies, we show that while such inducements increase attention check passage, they do not reduce noise in descriptive or experimental survey items. In addition, the inducements cause some respondents to drop out of the survey. These results have important implications for applied research. While scholars should continue to measure inattention via attention checks, increasing the attentiveness of “shirker” respondents is not as easy as previously thought.