Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya

Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová () and Edward Miguel

No 13830, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings? We focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among German university students (Becker et al. 2016) and were implemented among representative samples across the globe (Falk et al. 2018). This paper presents results of an experimental validation conducted among low-income individuals in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that quantitative survey measures -- hypothetical versions of experimental tasks -- of time preference, attitude to risk and altruism are good predictors of choices in incentivized experiments, suggesting these measures are broadly experimentally valid. At the same time, we find that qualitative questions -- self-assessments -- do not correlate with the experimental measures of preferences in the Kenyan sample. Thus, caution is needed before treating self-assessments as proxies of preferences in new contexts.

Keywords: Preference measurement; Experiment; Survey; Validation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13830 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya (2024)
Journal Article: Using survey questions to measure preferences: Lessons from an experimental validation in Kenya (2020)
Working Paper: Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya (2020)
Working Paper: Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya (2020)
Working Paper: Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya (2019)
Working Paper: Using Survey Questions to Measure Preferences: Lessons from an Experimental Validation in Kenya (2019)
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:cpr:ceprdp:13830

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13830

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().