I regularly do this when designing consumer surveys as part of m professional work—the concern in those instances is that respondents are mainly completing the survey for a small monetary reward and so are incentivised to click through as fast as possible. To help my own survey development skills, I participate in several online panels and can confirm that whilst not exactly standard practice, a non-negligible proportion of online consumer surveys will include questions like this used to screen out respondents who are not paying attention.
This is less of a concern for the EA survey, but is almost costless to include such a screening question so seems like an easy way to help validate any resulting analysis or conclusions.
I regularly do this when designing consumer surveys as part of m professional work—the concern in those instances is that respondents are mainly completing the survey for a small monetary reward and so are incentivised to click through as fast as possible. To help my own survey development skills, I participate in several online panels and can confirm that whilst not exactly standard practice, a non-negligible proportion of online consumer surveys will include questions like this used to screen out respondents who are not paying attention.
This is less of a concern for the EA survey, but is almost costless to include such a screening question so seems like an easy way to help validate any resulting analysis or conclusions.