Feeling Observed? A Field Experiment on the Effects of Intense Survey Participation on Job Seekers’ Labor Market Outcomes

The authors causally identify the effects of intense survey participation on key labor market outcomes by randomly excluding individuals willing to sign up for a high-intensity survey with a focus on job search and well-being. Using administrative data, they find that, on average, survey participation had no effect on labor market outcomes during the year after signing up. They also demonstrate that an alternative selection-on-observables approach would yield misleading results. These findings underscore the value of experiments in examining effects of survey participation.