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Abstraction in Experimental Design

Testing the Tradeoffs

Jonathan Renshon author Joshua D Kertzer author Ryan Brutger author Chagai M Weiss author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:27th Oct '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Abstraction in Experimental Design cover

This Element explores how political scientists designing experiments address how abstract their experimental stimuli should be.

Political scientists designing experiments often face the question of how abstract or detailed their experimental stimuli should be. Typically, this question is framed in terms of tradeoffs relating to experimental control and generalizability: the more context introduced into studies, the less control, and the more difficulty generalizing the results. Yet, we have reason to question this tradeoff, and there is relatively little systematic evidence to rely on when calibrating the degree of abstraction in studies. We make two contributions. First, we provide a theoretical framework which identifies and considers the consequences of three dimensions of abstraction in experimental design: situational hypotheticality, actor identity, and contextual detail. Second, we field a range of survey experiments, varying these levels of abstraction. We find that situational hypotheticality does not substantively change experimental results, but increased contextual detail dampens treatment effects and the salience of actor identities moderates results in specific situations.

ISBN: 9781108995597

Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 5mm

Weight: 150g

75 pages