Economic Survey Response Behavior: Experiments Using A Virtual Laboratory

经济调查和其他调查一直被试图从被调查者的真实行为中获取信息的问题所困扰。调查问题必须精心设计，以达到获得准确信息的目的。调查设计中出现的具体问题包括锚定和焦点问题。锚定指的是一种广泛观察和有充分记录的家庭效应，在这种效应中，问题提供的可能不相关的线索或环境会影响反应。例如，当受试者被要求判断一个不确定的量，比如亚马逊河的长度，是否超过了某个值（锚点），然后被要求做出估计时，他们通常会给出一个倾向于锚点的回答。焦点指的是一个四舍五入的常规反应。例如，当受试者被问及上班所需的时间时，他们通常会给出诸如5分钟、10分钟、15分钟、30分钟、60分钟等答案，而不是中间值，因此，即使真实值是连续分布的，人们也会在这些焦点值处观察到反应的峰值。该研究将使用计量经济学方法来推断这些偏差的程度，以及如何根据使用互联网（全球网络）作为虚拟实验室的问卷设计实验来调整这些偏差。

Daniel L. McFadden University of California - Berkeley SBR-9601149 Economic and other surveys are plagued by the continuing problem of trying to elicit information about respondents' true behavior. Survey questions must be carefully framed to accomplish the aim of eliciting accurate information. Among the specific problems arising in survey design to be investigated are anchoring and focal points. Anchoring refers to a widely observed and well- documented family effects in which presumably irrelevant cues or settings provided by questions influence responses. For example, subjects asked to judge whether an uncertain quantity, such as the length of the Amazon, exceeds a certain value (the anchor) and then asked for an estimate, will typically give a response that is pulled toward the anchor. Focal point refers to a rounded off, conventional response. For example, subjects asked for the time it takes them to get to work will frequently give answers such as 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 minutes, rather than intermediate values, so that one observes spikes of responses at these focal values even though the true values have a continuous distribution. The research will use econometric methods to infer the extent of these biases and how they might be adjusted for based on experiments with questionnaire design using the internet (world-wide web) as a virtual laboratory.