How reliable is Facebook’s advertising data for use in social science research? Insights from a cross-national online survey

• DOI: 10.4054/mpidr-wp-2021-006
• Publication Date: 2021-04-15T23:02:47Z
• Authors: André Grow; Daniela Perrotta; Emanuele Del Fava; Jorge Cimentada; Francesco Rampazzo; Beatriz Sofía Gil...; Emilio Zagheni; René D. Flores; Ilana Ventura; Ingmar G. Weber
• Keywords: Cyberpsychology

Social scientists increasingly use Facebook's advertising platform for research, either in the form of conducting digital censuses general population, or recruiting participants survey research.Both approaches depend on reliability data that Facebook provides about its users, but little is known how reliable these are.We address this gap a large-scale, cross-national online (N = 137,224), which we compare self-reported and Facebook-classified demographic information (sex, age, region residence).Our results suggest can be fruitfully used conducing social science research if additional steps are taken to assess characteristics under consideration.