Luks Samantha, Brady Henry E
University of Minnesota, USA.
Eval Rev. 2003 Aug;27(4):395-420. doi: 10.1177/0193841X03254345.
The authors explore how to define a welfare spell and how well surveys measure welfare spells. By comparing survey and administrative data from the Work Pays Demonstration Project in California on the receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), they find that a substantial amount of administrative churning occurs in administrative data. Through a mixing model of several break lengths, the authors find that a single definition of a break in welfare is not applicable to all respondents. Additionally, it appears that there is substantial variation in the break lengths respondents utilize. Finally, the authors show that the complexity of defining an accurate break in spells creates difficulties for detecting biases in survey responses.
作者探讨了如何定义福利期以及调查对福利期的衡量效果如何。通过比较加利福尼亚州工作支付示范项目中关于领取抚养子女家庭援助（AFDC）的调查数据和行政数据，他们发现行政数据中存在大量行政变动。通过几种中断时长的混合模型，作者发现单一的福利中断定义并不适用于所有受访者。此外，受访者使用的中断时长似乎存在很大差异。最后，作者表明，定义准确的福利期中断的复杂性给检测调查回复中的偏差带来了困难。
