Identifying the Types of Insufficient Effort Responders

Abstract

With the increased use of surveys across organizations and academic arenas, ensuring the quality of data is critical. While there are many threats to validity, Insufficient Effort Responding (IER) is an underappreciated contributor. The current study employs a latent class analysis to assess the types of Insufficient Effort Responders in five archival data sets. Frequency of IER and the differential impacts of IER types on reliability are also assessed. Results indicate that there are three types of survey responders: conscientious responders, random IER responders, and patterned IER responders, each with their own characteristics. Furthermore, the removal of IER based on latent classes and a variety of detection indices are shown to have minimal but differential impact on reliability.