Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS): Proposal for Renewed Support, 2012-2015

社会科学分时实验（TESS）是一个以美国成年人为样本进行社会科学调查实验的平台。TESS成立于2001年，利用规模经济，使社会科学领域的学者能够在竞争的基础上，对具有广泛理论和实践重要性的问题进行开创性的研究。TESS的智力价值与它的成功密切相关，它使社会科学家能够及时收集原始的基于人口的实验数据；促进更好地了解基本的社会、政治和经济问题；通过将费用集中用于其他单独的研究，最大限度地提高财务效率；并提供指导和教育资源。新的举措扩展了TESS的教育方面，扩大了TESS的提议者群体，使TESS能够为评估实验推断的概率抽样价值做出贡献，并加强审查过程以确保最高质量的研究。TESS更广泛的影响是广泛的。自成立以来，TESS已经为400多名社会、行为和经济研究人员提供了进行原创实验的机会，测试了广泛的创新假设。建议是在持续的基础上征求的，经过严格的同行评审，并涉及具有代表性的国家样本的基于互联网的数据收集。由于采样、数据收集和数据管理的成本分布在各个研究中，因此该项目极大地提高了效率。迄今为止，TESS已经开展了270多项基于人群的实验，涉及学科包括社会学、心理学、政治学、传播学、经济学、判断和决策、法律、公共卫生、传播学、精神病学等。通过为基于人口的实验提供一个通用平台，TESS有效地使创新学者能够识别因果动态，从而促进对投资行为、司法合法性、投票率、信任等主题的了解。TESS还促进了诸如网络跟踪对调查反应的影响以及测量敏感态度的最佳方法等主题的方法进步。TESS促进了本科和研究生阶段的教学、培训和学习。学生们定期提交提案，其中许多都得到了资助。然而，即使没有得到资助，学生们也会在关键的设计阶段收到关于他们研究的详细反馈。TESS扩大了代表性不足的群体作为调查人员和研究参与者的参与。TESS的核心任务是使高质量原始实验数据的获取民主化，从而将基于人群的实验的权力交给来自所有背景、所有学术机构和所有职业阶段的研究人员。由于TESS数据收集平台涉及代表性样本，因此TESS项目的结果反映了美国的广泛多样性。

Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) is a platform for conducting social science survey experiments fielded on probability-based samples of United States adults. TESS was established in 2001 and capitalizes on economies of scale to enable scholars from across the social sciences, on a competitive basis, to conduct ground-breaking research on issues of broad theoretical and practical importance. The intellectual merit of TESS is closely connected to its successes in enabling social scientists to collect original population-based experimental data in a timely manner; promoting better understanding of fundamental social, political and economic questions; maximizing financial efficiency by pooling expenses for otherwise separate studies; and offering mentoring and educational resources. The new initiatives extend educational aspects of TESS, broaden TESS' population of proposers, enable TESS to contribute to assessing the value of probability sampling for experimental inference, and enhance the review process to ensure the highest quality studies.The broader impacts of TESS are wide-ranging. Since its inception, TESS has provided more than 400 social, behavioral, and economic researchers with the opportunity to conduct original experiments, testing a broad range of innovative hypotheses. Proposals are solicited on a continuous basis, undergo rigorous peer review, and involve Internet-based data collection with a representative national sample. The project provides an enormous gain in efficiency since costs of sampling, data collection, and data management are distributed across studies. To date, TESS has conducted over 270 population-based experiments, across disciplines including sociology, psychology, political science, communication, economics, judgment and decision making, law, public health, communication, psychiatry, and others.By providing a common platform for population based experiments, TESS efficiently enables innovative scholars to identify causal dynamics that advance knowledge on topics such as investment behavior, judicial legitimacy, voting turnout, trust, and many more. TESS also facilitates methodological advances to topics such as the effects of web-tracking on survey response and the optimal ways to measure sensitive attitudes.TESS promotes teaching, training, and learning at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students regularly submit proposals, many of which are funded. Even when not funded, however, students receive detailed feedback on their research at the critical design stage. TESS broadens the participation of underrepresented groups, both as investigators and research participants. At the heart of TESS' mission is the democratization of access to high quality, original experimental data, thereby putting the power of population-based experiments in the hands of researchers from all backgrounds, all academic institutions, and all career stages. And because the TESS data collection platform involves a representative sample, the results of TESS projects reflect the broad diversity of the United States.