scholarly journals Identification of Preferences in Forced-Choice Conjoint Experiments: Reassessing the Quantity of Interest

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Flavien Ganter
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Selection Probability ◽  
Quantity Of Interest ◽  
Standard Component ◽  
Compositional Effects ◽  
Choice Setting

Abstract Forced-choice conjoint experiments have become a standard component of the experimental toolbox in political science and sociology. Yet the literature has largely overlooked the fact that conjoint experiments can be used for two distinct purposes: to uncover respondents’ multidimensional preferences, and to estimate the causal effects of some attributes on a profile’s selection probability in a multidimensional choice setting. This paper makes the argument that this distinction is both analytically and practically relevant, because the quantity of interest is contingent on the purpose of the study. The vast majority of social scientists relying on conjoint analyses, including most scholars interested in studying preferences, have adopted the average marginal component effect (AMCE) as their main quantity of interest. The paper shows that the AMCE is neither conceptually nor practically suited to explore respondents’ preferences. Not only is it essentially a causal quantity conceptually at odds with the goal of describing patterns of preferences, but it also does generally not identify preferences, mixing them with compositional effects unrelated to preferences. This paper proposes a novel estimand—the average component preference—designed to explore patterns of preferences, and it presents a method for estimating it.

scholarly journals Identification of Preferences in Forced-Choice Conjoint Experiments: Reassessing the Quantity of Interest

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavien Ganter
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Selection Probability ◽  
Standard Element ◽  
Quantity Of Interest ◽  
Compositional Effects ◽  
Choice Setting

Forced-choice conjoint experiments have become a standard element of the experimental toolbox in political science and sociology. Yet the literature has largely overlooked the fact that conjoint experiments are used for two distinct purposes: to uncover respondents' multidimensional preferences, and to estimate the causal effects of some attributes on a profile's selection probability in a multidimensional choice setting. This paper makes the argument that this distinction is both analytically and practically relevant, because the quantity of interest is contingent on the purpose of the study. The vast majority of social scientists relying on conjoint analyses, including most scholars interested in studying preferences, have adopted the average marginal component effect (AMCE) as their main quantity of interest. The paper shows that the AMCE is neither conceptually nor practically suited to explore respondents' preferences. Not only is it essentially a causal quantity conceptually at odds with the goal of describing patterns of preferences, but it also does generally not identify preferences, mixing them with compositional effects unrelated to preferences. This paper proposes a novel estimand—the average component preference (ACP)—designed to explore patterns of preferences, and it presents a method for estimating it.

Twin Studies and Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levente Littvay
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Behavioral Genetics ◽  
Twin Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Genetic Transmission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Direction Of Causation ◽  
Social Part ◽  
The Impact

As recently as 2005, John Alford and colleagues surprised political science with their twin study that found empirical evidence of the genetic transmission of political attitudes and behaviors. Reactions in the field were mixed, but one thing is for sure: it is not time to mourn the social part of the social sciences. Genetics is not the deterministic mechanism that social scientists often assume it to be. No specific part of DNA is responsible for anything but minute, indirect effects on political orientations. Genes express themselves differently in different contexts, suggesting that the political phenomenon behavioral political scientists take for granted may be quite volatile; hence, the impact of genetics is also much less stable in its foundations than initially assumed. Twin studies can offer a unique and powerful avenue to study these behavioral processes as they are more powerful than cross-sectional (or even longitudinal) studies not only for understanding heritability but also for asserting the direction of causation, the social (and, of course, genetic) pathways that explain how political phenomena are related to each other. This chapter aims to take the reader through this journey that political science has gone through over the past decade and a half and point to the synergies behavioral political science and behavioral genetics offer to the advancement of the discipline.

Genes, cognition, and social behavior: Next steps for foundations and researchers

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Lupia
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Political Science ◽  
National Science Foundation ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Unpublished Report ◽  
Summary Statement ◽  
The One ◽  
Scientific Value

Editor's note This well circulated but heretofore unpublished report is the summary statement of an interdisciplinary meeting of scholars convened by the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia on June 28, 2010. The workshop, which was funded by the NSF's Political Science Program (Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences Grant #1037831), was convened to answer two compelling questions: Are studies of social behavior that build from discoveries about genes and/or cognition of greater social and scientific value than studies of the same topics that ignore such factors? And, how can fundable research on genes, cognition, and politics generate transformative scientific practices, infrastructure, and findings of high social value? Assembled for the workshop were a group of scholars representing diverse yet increasingly connected research areas, including genetics, cognitive science and neuroscience, decision making and risk analysis, economics, political science, and sociology. The resulting report outlines the substantial challenges facing interdisciplinary research but also describes the considerable contributions to knowledge that could result from sustained collaborations between biologists, geneticists, and brain scientists on the one hand and social scientists on the other. Following this main report are three white papers by Jeremy Freese. Elizabeth Hammock, and Rose McDermott, which address importmant considerations related to the discussion. For a download of the full report, see http://www.isr.umich.edu.cps/workshop.Welcome.html.

scholarly journals Causal Interaction and Effect Modification: Same Model, Different Concepts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Keele ◽  
Randolph T. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Interaction Analysis ◽  
Effect Modification ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Causal Interaction ◽  
Single Treatment ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Difference

Social scientists use the concept of interactions to study effect dependency. Such analyses can be conducted using standard regression models. However, an interaction analysis may represent either a causal interaction or effect modification. Under causal interaction, the analyst is interested in whether two treatments have differing effects when both are administered. Under effect modification, the analysts investigates whether the effect of a single treatment varies across levels of a baseline covariate. Importantly, the identification assumptions for these two types of analysis are very different. In this paper, we clarify the difference between these two types of interaction analysis. We demonstrate that this distinction is mostly ignored in the political science literature. We conclude with a review of several applications.

University of East Africa Social Science Conference

1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-540
Author(s):  
Martin Lowenkopf
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science Conference ◽  
The University ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Economic Criteria

This conference brought together over 70 social scientists from the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan constituent Colleges of the University of East Africa (with visitors from Zambia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Rhodesia) for their annual inter-disciplinary, or rather trans-disciplinary, deliberations. Why ‘trans-disciplinary’? Because the historians discussed nationalism, politics, and church movements; political scientists discoursed on economics, rural settlement, agriculture, and education; sociologists criticised political decisions and economic criteria which hampered their investigations into resettlement programmes; and the economists, while speaking mostly about economics, were represented at virtually all panels, apparently to guard their disciplinary preserve against intrusions, presumptions and, in one case, elision with political science.

Global Bourdieu

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-586
Author(s):  
Niilo Kauppi ◽  
David Swartz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Domination ◽  
The Web

Pierre Bourdieu was a prolific scholar whose multifaceted work inspired research in a wide variety of areas. Beyond sociology we find his influence in anthropology, history, cultural studies, political science, and international relations. Particularly after 1995, when he engaged in a fight against neo-liberalism, he became the pre-eminent public intellectual. Bourdieu clearly stands in the pantheon of the greatest contemporary social scientists. This article explores the social mechanisms that enabled the global circulation of Bourdieu’s oeuvre. Multiple factors in multiple intellectual fields contributed to this process. There are “global Bourdieus.” Throughout his career Bourdieu was a defender of the dominated, and a sharp critic of established powers; his work provides individuals in a variety of central and peripheral fields weapons against social domination whatever its form. This narrative weds together his biography and oeuvre, and forms the web that unites him with the social carriers of his work globally.

Testing Causal Theories with Learned Proxies

2022 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Knox ◽  
Christopher Lucas ◽  
Wendy K. Tam Cho
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Point Estimates ◽  
Causal Diagrams ◽  
Causal Theories

Social scientists commonly use computational models to estimate proxies of unobserved concepts, then incorporate these proxies into subsequent tests of their theories. The consequences of this practice, which occurs in over two-thirds of recent computational work in political science, are underappreciated. Imperfect proxies can reflect noise and contamination from other concepts, producing biased point estimates and standard errors. We demonstrate how analysts can use causal diagrams to articulate theoretical concepts and their relationships to estimated proxies, then apply straightforward rules to assess which conclusions are rigorously supportable. We formalize and extend common heuristics for “signing the bias”—a technique for reasoning about unobserved confounding—to scenarios with imperfect proxies. Using these tools, we demonstrate how, in often-encountered research settings, proxy-based analyses allow for valid tests for the existence and direction of theorized effects. We conclude with best-practice recommendations for the rapidly growing literature using learned proxies to test causal theories. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The State of Social Sciences in Iran

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
The University

The term “social sciences” (‘ulūm-i-ijtimā’ī) has gained currency in Iran only during the last fifteen years or so, but some of the disciplines falling within its purview have been in existence for a longer period. Thus the first institution for teaching political science was established in 1899, and the first chair of sociology was created in 19 35 in the University of Tehran. Besides, iike Molière’s bourgeois gentillhomme who belatedly realized that he had been making prose all his life without being aware of it, some Iranian scholars too have long been engaged in writing, translating and conducting research on social problems or using sociological concepts without being conscious of themselves as social scientists.Since from a chronological viewpoint, political science appeared in Iran prior to other disciplines of social sciences and its studies involve problems of a distinct nature, the present paper is divided into two parts: the first dealing with political science, and the second with sociology and related disciplines.

American Cities and American Political Science—a Look at Thick Injustice

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 739-742
Author(s):  
Jody Miller
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Related Question ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
American Cities

The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom's Justice and the American Metropolis concisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: “Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of ‘thick injustice’—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change.” The fact that the topic of “urban politics” is not a major theme of political science scholarship both reflects and exacerbates this challenge. And so we have decided to invite a diverse group of social scientists to discuss the book in light of the very big question that it poses: How do American cities look when assessed in terms of their “justice” (or “injustice”), and how might they look if they were assessed in these terms more seriously? In considering this question, discussants have also been asked to consider a related question: How does American political science look when assessed in terms of the extent to which it takes the question of urban justice and injustice seriously?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

American Cities and American Political Science—a Look at Thick Injustice

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-734
Author(s):  
Dianne Pinderhughes
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Related Question ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
American Cities

The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom's Justice and the American Metropolis concisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: “Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of ‘thick injustice’—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change.” The fact that the topic of “urban politics” is not a major theme of political science scholarship both reflects and exacerbates this challenge. And so we have decided to invite a diverse group of social scientists to discuss the book in light of the very big question that it poses: How do American cities look when assessed in terms of their “justice” (or “injustice”), and how might they look if they were assessed in these terms more seriously? In considering this question, discussants have also been asked to consider a related question: How does American political science look when assessed in terms of the extent to which it takes the question of urban justice and injustice seriously?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

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