IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/polals/v15y2007i01p1-20_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Logic of the Survey Experiment Reexamined

Author

Listed:
  • Gaines, Brian J.
  • Kuklinski, James H.
  • Quirk, Paul J.

Abstract

Scholars of political behavior increasingly embed experimental designs in opinion surveys by randomly assigning respondents alternative versions of questionnaire items. Such experiments have major advantages: they are simple to implement and they dodge some of the difficulties of making inferences from conventional survey data. But survey experiments are no panacea. We identify problems of inference associated with typical uses of survey experiments in political science and highlight a range of difficulties, some of which have straightforward solutions within the survey-experimental approach and some of which can be dealt with only by exercising greater caution in interpreting findings and bringing to bear alternative strategies of research.

Suggested Citation

  • Gaines, Brian J. & Kuklinski, James H. & Quirk, Paul J., 2007. "The Logic of the Survey Experiment Reexamined," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:15:y:2007:i:01:p:1-20_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1047198700006343/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lala Muradova & Ross James Gildea, 2021. "Oil wealth and US public support for war," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, January.
    2. Patrick Haack & Michael D. Pfarrer & Andreas Georg Scherer, 2014. "Legitimacy-as-Feeling: How Affect Leads to Vertical Legitimacy Spillovers in Transnational Governance," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 634-666, June.
    3. Borisova, Ekaterina & Ivanov, Denis, 2021. "Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and Russian public support for anti-pandemic measures," BOFIT Discussion Papers 09/2021, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    4. Hicken, Allen & Leider, Stephen & Ravanilla, Nico & Yang, Dean, 2018. "Temptation in vote-selling: Evidence from a field experiment in the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 1-14.
    5. Steven M. Sylvester, 2021. "COVID‐19 and Motivated Reasoning: The Influence of Knowledge on COVID‐Related Policy and Health Behavior," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2341-2359, September.
    6. Ilyana Kuziemko & Michael I. Norton & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2015. "How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1478-1508, April.
    7. Meng, Tianguang & Su, Zheng, 2021. "When top-down meets bottom-up: Local officials and selective responsiveness within fiscal policymaking in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    8. Borisova, Ekaterina & Ivanov, Denis S., 2021. "Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and Russian public support for anti-pandemic measures," BOFIT Discussion Papers 9/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    9. Kuehnhanss, Colin R. & Heyndels, Bruno, 2018. "All’s fair in taxation: A framing experiment with local politicians," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 26-40.
    10. Dustin Tingley, 2014. "Survey Research in International Political Economy: Motivations, Designs, Methods," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 443-451, May.
    11. Roman Chytilek & Miroslav Mareš & Jakub Drmola & Lenka Hrbková & Petra Mlejnková & Zuzana Špačková & Michal Tóth, 2022. "An experimental study of countermeasures against threats: real-world effects meet treatment effects," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 4825-4840, December.
    12. Manville, Michael & Levine, Adam Seth, 2018. "What motivates public support for public transit?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 567-580.
    13. Aklin, Michaël & Cheng, Chao-Yo & Urpelainen, Johannes, 2018. "Social acceptance of new energy technology in developing countries: A framing experiment in rural India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 466-477.
    14. Miquel Pellicer & Patrizio Piraino & Eva Wegner, 2014. "Information, mobilization, and demand for redistribution: A survey experiment in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 139, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    15. Jason Barabas & Jennifer Jerit, 2009. "Estimating the Causal Effects of Media Coverage on Policy‐Specific Knowledge," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 73-89, January.
    16. Diament, Sean M. & Kaya, Ayse & Magenheim, Ellen B., 2022. "Frames that matter: Increasing the willingness to get the Covid-19 vaccines," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    17. Angino, Siria & Secola, Stefania, 2022. "Instinctive versus reflective trust in the European Central Bank," Working Paper Series 2660, European Central Bank.
    18. Kevin L. Cope, 2023. "Measuring law's normative force," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 1005-1044, December.
    19. Briguglio, Marie & Delaney, Liam & Wood, Alex, 2018. "Partisanship, priming and participation in public-good schemes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 136-150.
    20. Adams, Ian T., 2022. "Modeling Officer Perceptions of Body-worn Cameras: A National Survey," Thesis Commons fnxbg, Center for Open Science.
    21. repec:zbw:bofitp:2021_009 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Ilyana Kuziemko & Ebonya Washington, 2015. "Why did the Democrats Lose the South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate," NBER Working Papers 21703, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Darya Reshetnikova, 2016. "Factors of Public Assessment of Civil Servants Performance in Providing Civil Services," Public administration issues, Higher School of Economics, issue 2, pages 131-164.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:15:y:2007:i:01:p:1-20_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pan .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.