9 - Natural Experiments and Quasi-experiments

Summary

Vignette experiments are vignettes are brief descriptions of social objects including a list of varying characteristics, on the basis of which survey respondents state their evaluations or judgments. The respondents’ evaluations typically concern positive beliefs, normative judgments, or their own intentions or actions. Using a study on the gender pay gap and an analysis of trust problems in the purchase of used cars as examples, we discuss the design characteristics of vignettes. Core issues are the selection of the vignettes that are included out of the universe of possible combinations, the type of dependent variables, such as rating scales or ranking tasks, the presentation style, differentiating text vignettes from a tabular format, and issues related to sampling strategies.