Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/287894 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) [ISSN:] 1467-985X [Volume:] 185 [Publisher:] Wiley [Place:] Hoboken, NJ [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] S343-S363
Publisher: 
Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Abstract: 
Social scientists increasingly use Facebook's advertising platform for research, either in the form of conducting digital censuses of the general population, or for recruiting participants for survey research. Both approaches depend on the accuracy of the data that Facebook provides about its users, but little is known about how accurate these data are. We address this gap in a large‐scale, cross‐national online survey (N = 137,224), in which we compare self‐reported and Facebook‐classified demographic information (sex, age and region of residence). Our results suggest that Facebook's advertising platform can be fruitfully used for conducing social science research if additional steps are taken to assess the accuracy of the characteristics under consideration.
Subjects: 
digital censuses
Facebook
online surveys
targeted advertising
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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