Eliciting Subjective Expectations in Internet Surveys

Adeline Delavande and Susann Rohwedder

No WR-589, Working Papers from RAND Corporation

Abstract: Individuals' subjective expectations are important in explaining heterogeneity in individual choices, but their elicitation poses challenges. In this paper, the authors present their findings from testing an innovative visual representation of an Internet survey in the context of individuals' Social Security expectations. Respondents were randomly divided into two groups: Half were administered the standard “percent chance” format; half were asked to allocate a total of 20 balls across seven bins to express what they believe the chances to be that their future Social Security benefits would fall into any one of those bins. The authors found that the main advantage of the visual format is that it generates usable answers for virtually all respondents. This suggests that the visual format is a viable alternative that leads to more complete data.

Keywords: subjective expectations; web survey; social security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C42 C81 D83 D84 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2008-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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