Deception in Experiments: Towards Guidelines on use in Applied Economics Research

Matthew C. Rousu, Gregory Colson, Jay Corrigan (), Carola Grebitus () and Maria Loureiro

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2015, vol. 37, issue 3, 524-536

Abstract: Many applied economics journals ban the use of deception in experiments, which contrasts with the policies in other academic disciplines. We examine the cases for and against deception, and describe the ways deception can be employed in applied economics experiments. We create a general ranking of harms from deception in experiments and present evidence from a survey (conducted in summer 2014) of agricultural and applied economists eliciting attitudes towards ten different deceptive practices. Survey respondents view inflicting physical or psychological harm on participants and not making promised payments as the most severe forms of deception. Less severe forms of deception include providing participants with incomplete product information and conducting an experiment using participants who are not aware they are part of an experiment. Finally, we provide recommendations for policies addressing deception in experiments.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppv002 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:37:y:2015:i:3:p:524-536.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy is currently edited by Timothy Park, Tomislav Vukina and Ian Sheldon

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().