A Text-As-Data Approach for Using Open-Ended Responses as Manipulation Checks

Jeffrey Ziegler

Political Analysis, 2022, vol. 30, issue 2, 289-297

Abstract: Participants that complete online surveys and experiments may be inattentive, which can hinder researchers’ abilityto draw substantive or causal inferences. As such, many practitioners include multiple factualor instructional closed-ended manipulation checks to identify low-attention respondents. However, closed-ended manipulation checks are either correct or incorrect, which allows participants to more easily guess and it reduces the potential variation in attention between respondents. In response to these shortcomings, I develop an automatic and standardized methodology to measure attention that relies on the text that respondents provide in an open-ended manipulation check. There are multiple benefits to this approach. First, it provides a continuous measure of attention, which allows for greater variation between respondents. Second, it reduces the reliance on subjective, paid humans to analyze open-ended responses. Last, I outline how to diagnose the impact of inattentive workers on the overall results, including how to assess the average treatment effect of those respondents that likely received the treatment. I provide easy-to-use software in R to implement these suggestions for open-ended manipulation checks.

Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:polals:v:30:y:2022:i:2:p:289-297_9

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