With Proactive Dependent Interviewing (PDI), respondents are reminded of the answer to a survey question they gave in a previous interview. The previous information is used to verify whether the respondent’s status has changed, or as a starting point for asking about events since the previous interview. In either case, concern is frequently voiced that measurement error from the first wave will be carried forward into future waves of the survey. We exploit a rare opportunity for validating several waves of a panel survey, to examine how the extent of cross-sectional and longitudinal aspects of measurement error evolves, when PDI is used over several waves: We use four waves of the panel study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS), linked to individual administrative records, to examine whether PDI has any cumulative effects on measurement error across waves, that go beyond the effects in a single wave reported in previous validation studies. We address the following questions:
(1) When PDI is used in successive waves to measure benefit receipt, does the extent of under-reporting and over-reporting change across waves?
(2) How does the resulting bias in prevalence rates change across waves?
(3) How do the changes in over- and under-reporting affect transition rates onto and off benefit receipt between waves? Do errors in transition rates change across waves?
(4) Do errors in reported months of receipt change across waves?