scholarly journals Statistical modeling of vignette data in psychology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Baguley ◽  
Grace Dunham ◽  
Oonagh Steer
Keyword(s):  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Efficient Design ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Random Factor ◽  
Unbalanced Designs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Nested Designs ◽  
Selection Of

Vignette methods are widely used in psychology and the social sciences to obtain responses to multi-dimensional scenarios or situations. Where quantitative data are collected this presents challenges to the selection of an appropriate statistical model. This depends on subtle details of the design and allocation of vignettes to participants. A key distinction is between factorial survey experiments where each participant receives a different allocation of vignettes from the full universe of possible vignettes and experimental vignette studies where this restriction is relaxed. The former leads to nested designs with a single random factor and the latter to designs with two crossed random factors. In addition, the allocation of vignettes to participants may lead to fractional or unbalanced designs and a consequent loss of efficiency or aliasing of the effects of interest. Many vignette studies (including some factorial survey experiments) include unmodeled heterogeneity between vignettes leading to potentially serious problems if traditional regression approaches are adopted. These issues are reviewed and recommendations are made for the efficient design of vignette studies including the allocation of vignettes to participants. Multilevel models are proposed as a general approach to handling nested and crossed designs including unbalanced and fractional designs. This is illustrated with a small vignette data set looking at judgements of online and offline bullying and harassment.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

scholarly journals Using Factorial Survey Experiments to Measure Attitudes, Social Norms, and Fairness Concerns in Developing Countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Liebe ◽  
Ismaïl M. Moumouni ◽  
Christine Bigler ◽  
Chantal Ingabire ◽  
Sabin Bieri
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Global South ◽  
Physical Punishment ◽  
Remote Area ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments

Survey-based experimental methods are increasingly used in the social sciences to study, among others, attitudes, norms, and fairness judgments. One of these methods is the factorial survey experiment (FSE or vignette experiment) in which respondents are confronted with various descriptions of situations that differ in a discrete number of attributes (or factors), and they are asked to evaluate those situations according to criteria such as agreement, approval, and fairness. Due to the systematic experimental variation of the presented situations, an FSE can separate effects of single situational attributes, allowing the causal influence of relevant situational attributes to be determined. This is the key advantage over simple survey items. While most studies using FSEs are carried out in developed countries in which respondents are familiar with surveys, we add further evidence that this method can also unfold its power in a developing context. Building on previous applications of FSEs in Africa, we demonstrate the usefulness of this method in four novel studies on social norms regarding the physical punishment of children and the social approval of technology adoption in Benin as well as judgments of just earnings in Rwanda. We also test for the first time the applicability of multiple vignettes per respondents in a Global South/remote area context. The results of these studies are theoretically meaningful and the overwhelming majority of respondents discriminate between vignettes. This supports the validity of FSEs. However, conducting survey experiments in developing countries is different from similar experimental research in developed countries and, therefore, we also discuss some of these differences and corresponding challenges. Last but not least, our article shows, provided a few precautions are heeded, that FSEs could be used as a vehicle to innovate social science research in a Global South/remote area context.

Tanks in the Spa Town. The New Book about the Events of the Year 1968 in Czechoslovakia

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 278-282
Author(s):  
Kirill A. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
Scientific Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Regional Perspective ◽  
The Way

This review is devoted to the monograph by Jan Nedvěd “We do not decline our heads. The events of the year 1968 in Karlovy Vary”. The Karlovy Vary municipal museum coincided its publishing with the fiftieth anniversary of the Prague spring which, considering the way of the presentation, turned the book not only to scientific event but also to the social one. The book describes sociopolitical trends in the region before the year 1968, the development of the reformist movement, the invasion and advance of the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries, and finally the decline of the reformist mood and the beginning of the normalization. Working on his writing, the author deeply studied the materials of the local archive and gathered the unique selection of the photographs depicting the passage of the soviet army through the spa town and the protest actions of its inhabitants. In the meantime, Nedvěd takes undue freedom with scientific terms, and his selection of historiography raises questions. The author bases his research on the Czech papers and scarcely uses the books of Russian origin. He also did not study the subject of the participating of the GDR’s army in the operation Danube, although these troops were concentrated on the borders of Karlovy Vary region as well. Because of this decision, there are no materials from German archives or historiography in the monograph. In general, the work lacks the width of studying its subject, but it definitively accomplishes the task of depicting the Prague spring from the regional perspective.

The social wasp Vespula germanica (Fabricius) (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) population dynamics in England over 39 years.

2018 ◽  
Vol 154 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Michael Archer
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Population Dynamic ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Social Wasp ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Vespula Germanica ◽  
The Social ◽  
Minimum Number ◽  
Suction Traps

1. Yearly records of worker Vespula germanica (Fabricius) taken in suction traps at Silwood Park (28 years) and at Rothamsted Research (39 years) are examined. 2. Using the autocorrelation function (ACF), a significant negative 1-year lag followed by a lesser non-significant positive 2-year lag was found in all, or parts of, each data set, indicating an underlying population dynamic of a 2-year cycle with a damped waveform. 3. The minimum number of years before the 2-year cycle with damped waveform was shown varied between 17 and 26, or was not found in some data sets. 4. Ecological factors delaying or preventing the occurrence of the 2-year cycle are considered.

Philosophcal review of h. white̕s tropological theory in the context of the new philosophy of history

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (152) ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
S. M. Geiko ◽  
◽  
O. D. Lauta
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Text Organization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Actual Material ◽  
The Common ◽  
Historical Nature ◽  
Selection Of

The article provides a philosophical analysis of the tropological theory of the history of H. White. The researcher claims that history is a specific kind of literature, and the historical works is the connection of a certain set of research and narrative operations. The first type of operation answers the question of why the event happened this way and not the other. The second operation is the social description, the narrative of events, the intellectual act of organizing the actual material. According to H. White, this is where the set of ideas and preferences of the researcher begin to work, mainly of a literary and historical nature. Explanations are the main mechanism that becomes the common thread of the narrative. The are implemented through using plot (romantic, satire, comic and tragic) and trope systems – the main stylistic forms of text organization (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony). The latter decisively influenced for result of the work historians. Historiographical style follows the tropological model, the selection of which is determined by the historian’s individual language practice. When the choice is made, the imagination is ready to create a narrative. Therefore, the historical understanding, according to H. White, can only be tropological. H. White proposes a new methodology for historical research. During the discourse, adequate speech is created to analyze historical phenomena, which the philosopher defines as prefigurative tropological movement. This is how history is revealed through the art of anthropology. Thus, H. White’s tropical history theory offers modern science f meaningful and metatheoretically significant. The structure of concepts on which the classification of historiographical styles can be based and the predictive function of philosophy regarding historical knowledge can be refined.

Precursors to Public Choice

2019 ◽  
pp. 796-816
Author(s):  
Iain McLean
Keyword(s):  
Public Choice ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mathematical Skill ◽  
The Many ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter reviews the many appearances, disappearances, and reappearances of axiomatic thought about social choice and elections since the era of ancient Greek democracy. Social choice is linked to the wider public-choice movement because both are theories of agency. Thus, just as the first public-choice theorists include Hobbes, Hume, and Madison, so the first social-choice theorists include Pliny, Llull, and Cusanus. The social-choice theory of agency appears in many strands. The most important of these are binary vs. nonbinary choice; aggregation of judgement vs. aggregation of opinion; and selection of one person vs. selection of many people. The development of social choice required both a public-choice mindset and mathematical skill.

scholarly journals Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

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