Tools

IOS11

Try it here

The study of relationship closeness has a long history in psychology and is currently expanding across the social sciences, including economics. Estimating relationship closeness requires appropriate tools. Here, we introduce and test a tool for estimating relationship closeness: 'IOS11'. The IOS11 scale has an 11-point response scale, is a refinement of the widely used Inclusion-of-Other-in-the-Self scale. Our tool has three key features. First, the IOS11 scale is easy to understand and administer. Second, we provide a portable, interactive interface for the IOS11 scale, which can be used in lab and online studies. Third, and crucially, based on within-participant correlations of 751 individuals, we demonstrate strong validity of the IOS11 scale in terms of representing features of relationships captured by a range of more complex survey instruments. Based on these correlations we find that the IOS11 scale outperforms the IOS scale and performs as well as the related Oneness scale.

Publication

"Introducing IOS11 as an extended interactive version of the ‘Inclusion of Other in the Self’ scale to estimate relationship closeness" (with Chris Starmer, Fabio Tufano & Simon Gächter). Scientific Reports. 2024.

Flexi-DPE

Try it here

In this paper we develop Flexi-DPE, which allows the estimation of distributional preference parameters elicited from as few as five decisions. Flexi-DPE builds on a method by Fisman, Kariv, and Markovits (2007) that uses 50 modified dictator games to estimate preference parameters of “fairmindedness” and “equity-efficiency”. Since eliciting 50 decisions is often not practical, we use simulations and pre-registered experiments to test the accuracy of preference parameters elicited from 20, 10, and 5 modified dictator games compared to the 50-decision benchmark. Accuracy of parameter estimates of fairmindedness is only slightly reduced with few decisions; accuracy of parameter estimates for equity-efficiency suffers somewhat with few decisions. We also show that preferences elicited with Flexi-DPE are robust with and without incentives, stable over time, and predictive of charitable giving. Our results provide a menu of options for researchers in terms of the trade-off between the accuracy of parameter estimates and the duration of elicitation.

Paper [Draft available upon request]

"Flexi-DPE: A Flexible Method for Distributional Preference Elicitation" (with Simon Gächter, Chris Starmer & Fabio Tufano)