The York Research Database

The anchoring vignette approach has grown in popularity as a method to
adjust for reporting heterogeneity in subjective self-reports, removing bias due to
systematic variation in reporting styles across study respondents. The use of
anchoring vignettes, however, has been limited to surveys where both
self-reports and vignette questions have been included. This diminishes
their wider application. We illustrate, using an application to
self-assessed health in a large household survey, how externally
collected vignettes can be used to adjust for reporting heterogeneity
in self-reports observed in datasets where vignettes have not been included.
Given that self-reports to survey questions are an important facet of
social research to understand differences across socio-economic groups and
populations, we anticipate the approach described will lead to new
applications of the anchoring vignette methodology.