Applying Benford's Law for Assessing the Validity of Social Science Data (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781009123075)

Benford's Law is a probability distribution for the likelihood of the leading digit in a set of numbers. This book seeks to improve and systematize the use of Benford's Law in the social sciences to assess the validity of self-reported data. The authors first introduce a new measure of conformity to the Benford distribution that is created using permutation statistical methods and employs the concept of statistical agreement. In a switch from a typical Benford application, this book moves away from using Benford's Law to test whether the data conform to the Benford distribution, to using it to draw conclusions about the validity of the data. The concept of 'Benford validity' is developed, which indicates whether a dataset is valid based on comparisons with the Benford distribution and, in relation to this, diagnostic procedure that assesses the impact of not having Benford validity on data analysis is devised.

Author: Michael A. Long,Paul B. Stretesky,Kenneth J. Berry
ISBN-10: 1009123076
ISBN-13: 9781009123075
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/23/2023
Pages: 200
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.03lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d