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Contains fulltext : 221487.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Multi-factorial survey experiments have become a well-established tool in social sciences as they combine experimental designs with advantages of heterogeneous respondent samples. This paper investigates three under-researched design features: how to present vignettes (running text vs. table), how to measure responses (rating vs. open scale), and how to sort vignettes (random vs. extreme-cases-first, to prevent censored responses). Experiments were conducted in a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subject design with 408 university students rating decks à 20 vignettes. Analyses of 7,895 ratings showed no differences of whether vignettes were presented as running texts or tables. Open scales revealed more measurement problems, e.g., missing values, than rating scales. Finally, vignettes presented randomly sorted produced similar results compared to sorting extreme vignette cases first. Recommendations based on the findings are to use random orders of vignettes and rating scales. Table vignettes provide an alternative to text vignettes but should be further evaluated with heterogeneous samples.

Item does not contain fulltext, Gender pay gaps likely persist in Western societies because both men and women consider somewhat lower earnings for female employees than for otherwise similar male employees to be fair. Two different theoretical approaches explain "legitimate" wage gaps: same-gender referent theory and reward expectations theory. The first approach states that women compare their lower earnings primarily with that of other underpaid women; the second approach argues that both men and women value gender as a status variable that yields lower expectations about how much each gender should be paid for otherwise equal work. This article is the first to analyze hypotheses contrasting the two theories using an experimental factorial survey design. In 2009, approximately 1,600 German residents rated more than 26,000 descriptions of fictitious employees. The labor market characteristics of each employee and the amount of information given about them were experimentally varied across all descriptions. The results primarily support reward expectations theory. Both men and women produced gender pay gaps in their fairness ratings (with the mean ratio of just female-to-male wages being .92). Respondents framed the just pay ratios by the gender inequalities they experienced in their own occupations, and some evidence of gender-specific evaluation standards emerged.

Contains fulltext : 161256.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), Over the last decade, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies on attitude and decision research which use the factorial survey (FS) design. The FS integrates experimental set-ups into a survey: respondents react to hypothetical descriptions (vignettes) while the values of each attribute (dimension) of these descriptions systematically vary in order to estimate their impact on respondent judgments. As the vignettes are based on a number of dimensions and as respondents evaluate several vignettes, FSs are demanding in terms of individual cognitive and information-processing abilities. So far, there is little empirical knowledge of whether and to what extent this complexity is feasible in general population samples with heterogeneous respondents. Using data from a study on the fairness of earnings (with a mixed mode sample consisting a computer assisted personal interview [CAPI], computer assisted self interview [CASI], and paper and pencil [PAPI] mode), the complexity of FSs is analyzed in terms of: 1) design dimensions, such as the number of vignette dimensions (five, eight, or 12) and the number of vignettes for single respondents (10, 20, or 30), which were varied in a 3x3 experimental design; and 2) respondent characteristics that are associated with cognitive abilities (age and education). Two different indicators for cognitive load as well as learning and fatigue effects are analyzed: 1) latency time and 2) response consistency. The results show that raw reaction times but not latency times are longer for older respondents, suggesting that the cognitive effort needed for the evaluation of vignettes is not particularly high. Consistency measures reveal that respondents with a lower educational level show greater inconsistency in their evaluations when the number of vignettes is high. The number of dimensions has an effect on consistency only when respondents have to rate a large number of vignettes. In short, the results demonstrate that FSs are