The Risk of Asking: Measurement Effects from a Baseline Survey in an Insurance Takeup Experiment by Xavier Gine, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman :: NEUDC 2007 Papers :: Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference :: Center for International

Does conducting a one-time household survey change the later behavior of those surveyed? Results from a two-stage field experiment on the purchase of hospitalization insurance in the Philippines suggest that it does. We started with a sample frame of clients from a large rural bank in the Philippines, and randomly selected individuals to either be surveyed or not surveyed by a local university research unit. The one-hour survey covered income, health status, accident occurrence and risks, and smoking habits. The survey did not include any questions about actual or possible insurance purchases. In the second stage, a local rural bank offered hospitalization insurance to both surveyed and non-surveyed individuals. Insurance marketing took place an average of two months after the survey, and surveyed individuals were not told of any connection between the survey and the bank. We measure insurance take-up using administrative data from the bank and find that those surveyed were 3.4 percentage points (6 percent) more likely to buy the insurance on average. We find some evidence that this effect is strongest for males, who ordinarily defer to their spouses on financial matters in the Philippines. We also find that the content of an individual question changed purchase decisions among those who are surveyed. The results have implications for the design and use of baseline surveys, high-frequency panels, and other repeated data collection processes where the initial contact with subjects is obtrusive.