Survey Experiments with Google Consumer Surveys: Promise and Pitfalls for Academic Research in Social Science
Survey Experiments with Google Consumer Surveys: Promise and Pitfalls for Academic Research in Social Science
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DOI：
10.1093/pan/mpw016
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发表时间：
2016-06-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Stevenson, Randy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Santoso, Lie Philip;Stein, Robert;Stevenson, Randy
在这篇文章中，我们评估了Google消费者调查（GCS）作为一种低成本的工具来进行严格的社会科学工作的有用性。我们发现，它的相对优点和缺点使其对那些试图通过随机分配到治疗组而不是选择可观察值来确定因果关系的研究人员最有用。这一发现在一定程度上源于这样一个事实：GCS相对于其他替代方案的真实的成本优势仅限于带有少量问题的短期调查。基于我们对四个典型的社会科学实验和一项治疗异质性研究的复制，我们发现该平台可以有效地用于实现治疗组之间的平衡，探索治疗异质性，包括操作检查，并且所提供的推断人口统计数据可能足以用于加权和探索异质性。最重要的是，我们成功地在每个实验中复制了通常的方向发现。总体而言，GCS可能是一个有用的平台，调查实验。
In this article, we evaluate the usefulness of Google Consumer Surveys (GCS) as a low-cost tool for doing rigorous social scientific work. We find that its relative strengths and weaknesses make it most useful to researchers who attempt to identify causality through randomization to treatment groups rather than selection on observables. This finding stems, in part, from the fact that the real cost advantage of GCS over other alternatives is limited to short surveys with a small number of questions. Based on our replication of four canonical social scientific experiments and one study of treatment heterogeneity, we find that the platform can be used effectively to achieve balance across treatment groups, explore treatment heterogeneity, include manipulation checks, and that the provided inferred demographics may be sufficiently sound for weighting and explorations of heterogeneity. Crucially, we successfully managed to replicate the usual directional finding in each experiment. Overall, GCS is likely to be a useful platform for survey experimentalists.