Assessing Quality of Answers to a Global Subjective Well-being Question Through Response Times

Many large-scale surveys measure subjective well-being (SWB) through a single survey item. This paper takes advantages of response time data to explore the relation between time taken to answer a single SWB item and the reliability and validity of answers to this SWB item. We found that reliability and validity of answers to the SWB item are low for fast respondents aged 70 and above and slow respondents between the age of 50 and 70. The findings indicate that longer time spent answering the single SWB item is associated with data of lower quality for respondents aged between 50 and 70, but data of higher quality for respondents aged 70 and above. This paper speaks to the importance of capitalizing response times that are readily available from computerized interviews to evaluate answers provided by respondents and calls for survey researchers' attention to differences in time taken to answer a survey question across respondent subgroups.