Using the Internet to conduct quantitative research presents challenges not found in conventional research. Paper-based survey quality criteria cannot be completely adapted to electronic formats. Electronic surveys have distinctive technological, demographic, and response characteristics that affect their design, use, and implementation. Survey design, participant privacy and confidentiality, sampling and subject solicitation, distribution methods and response rates, and survey piloting are critical methodological components that must be addressed. In this article, quality criteria for electronic survey design and use based on an investigation of recent electronic survey literature are presented. The application of these criteria to reach a hard-to-involve online population—nonpublic participants of online communities (also known as “lurkers”)—and survey them on their community participation, a topic not salient to the purpose of their online communities is demonstrated in a case study. The results show that a hard-to-reach audience can be reached using the quality criteria that are most important for reaching these types of audiences. The results suggest how the use of some criteria may conflict and what researchers may experience when conducting electronic surveys in an online culture in which people are not tolerant of intrusions into online lives.

This paper analyzes the role of Internet Discussion Groups in informal academic communication. It examines the claims in the literature that there are general benefits of academic mailing lists and newsgroups for researchers. Different hypotheses relating to potential contact and information benefits are tested with data of a random sample of English and Dutch university researchers within the humanities, the social and natural sciences. The outcomes support hypotheses about a few information effects and, more often, contact benefits of Internet Discussion Groups. Researchers build up weak contacts that make their research more visible and that make them more aware of other researchers“ work. These weak contacts are useful for the reception of new research papers. As a result, Internet Discussion Groups provide access to social capital. However, contrary to what is stated in the literature, the data shows no evidence for expectations about equalizing effects on the general structure of academic communication. Internet Discussion Groups do not reduce inequalities in the opportunities to use informal communication channels. * The research project was conducted while the author was a Ph.D. student at the Interuniversity Center

Three experiments explored the role of negotiator focus in disconnecting negotiated outcomes and evaluations. Negotiators who focused on their target prices, the ideal outcome they could obtain, achieved objectively superior outcomes compared with negotiators who focused on their lower bound (e.g., reservation price). Those negotiators who focused on their targets, however, were less satisfied with their objectively superior outcomes. In the final experiment, when negotiators were reminded of their lower bound after the negotiation, the satisfaction of those negotiators who had focused on their target prices was increased, with outcomes and evaluations becoming connected rather than disconnected. The possible negative effects of setting high goals and the temporal dimensions of the disconnection and reconnection between outcomes and evaluations are discussed. Given that so many important aspects of life depend on the outcomes of negotiations, it seems natural that people try to maximize their potential gains when negotiating with others. To procure beneficial outcomes, negotiators should set aggressive, motivating goals for themselves. In fact, many negotiators do set high goals (Kelley, 1966), and there is a relationship between the

Contingent valuation (CV) plays an important role in policy valuation in domains like environmental management. This research examines sequencing effects when people are asked to value multiple environmental programs and investigates the consistency of responses to different environmental programs using different measures of attitude. In-person interviews using computer-administration were conducted for 190 respondents, half in Raleigh-Durham, NC., and half in Austin, Texas. Respondents evaluated five different environmental programs in each of two sessions, separated by a two-week interval. Half the sample evaluated each program with a willingness-to-pay (WTP) response in the first session and then evaluated the same programs using a set of attitude rating scales in the second session. The other half of the respondents did the tasks in the reverse order. The pattern of WTP responses indicated strong sequencing effects. The WTP amounts were much larger when a good was valued first in a sequence rather than at any point later in a sequence. Contrary to standard economic theory, the total of the WTP amounts for the bundle of five goods was dependent upon which good was evaluated first in a sequence: the more highly valued the first good, the higher the total WTP for all five goods. A comparison of the WTP responses with the attitude rating scales suggested that

One need not search far for evidence that academic dishonesty is ubiquitous in our society. Indeed, newspaper accounts of cheating by students, teachers, and administrators appear on a fairly regular basis, and HBO recently premiered a movie, Cheaters (May 20, 2000), based on a Chicago high school’s cheating scandal. In the research literature, academic dishonesty has been the subject of research for decades, addressing a wide variety of issues and questions, including what academic dishonesty is, how prevalent it is, who cheats, why students cheat, what the faculty reaction is, and what the institutional response is. For a review of much of this research, see Cizek (1999), Crown and Spiller, (1998), and Whitley (1998). One of the main issues that emerges from the literature relates to inconsistencies in the definition of academically dishonest behaviors and the lack of consensus and general understanding of academic dishonesty among all members of the campus community. According to Roberts and Rabinowitz (1992), “Our ability to alter the environment in which cheating takes place will be determined by our understanding of how people (both faculty and students) perceive cheating and its seriousness”

Abstract: Psychologists have developed effective survey methods of measuring how happy people feel at a given time. The relationship between how happy a person feels and utility is an unresolved question. Existing work in Economics either ignores happiness data or assumes that felt happiness is more or less the same thing as flow utility. The approach we propose in this paper steers a middle course between the two polar views that “happiness is irrelevant to Economics ” and the view that “happiness is a sufficient statistic for utility.” We argue that felt happiness is not the same thing as flow utility, but that it does have a systematic relationship to utility. In particular, we propose that happiness is the sum of two components: (1) elation--or short-run happiness--which depends on recent news about lifetime utility and (2) baseline mood--or long-run happiness--which is a subutility function much like health, entertainment, or nutrition. In principle, all of the usual techniques of price theory apply to baseline mood, but the application of those techniques is complicated by the fact that many people may not know the true household production function for baseline mood. If this theory is on target, there are two reasons data on felt happiness is important for Economics. First, short-run happiness in response to news can give important information about

(incomplete and preliminary) Abstract: There is overwhelming empirical evidence that cognitive limitations and social interactions lead to biases in responses to survey questions. In addition, there is evidence that some of the underlying processes are moderated by age. The purpose of the Berkeley Internet Virtual Laboratory (IVLab) is to study these phenomena using experimental surveys conducted over the internet. The internet is a cost-effective and flexible way to conduct experiments on survey response bias. There is also a good chance that field surveys will be conducted over the internet in the near future. However, selection problems are a major concern, in particular when the target population consists primarily of older individuals. In this paper, we present a research strategy that allows to address selection problems and the analysis of survey response biases in a consistent framework. For illustration, we report some preliminary results based on data from a pilot study for the Retirement Perspectives Survey (RPS), an experimental survey conducted over the internet with a target population of older Americans.

This paper examines possible barriers to securitization, focusing on behavioral responses to such novel instruments. These barriers include the difficulties of conveying the associated risks, even to investors who are sophisticated about finance (but still uncertain about model risk and structural uncertainties). Our analyses will draw on results in behavioral decision making and psychology. They will lead to proposals for empirical research and general strategies for making securities design more consonant with investor behavior.

Since the late 1990s, online shopping has taken off as an increasing number of consumers purchase increasingly diversified products on the Internet. Given that how to attract and retain consumers is critical to the success of online retailers, research on the antecedents of consumer acceptance of online shopping has attracted widespread attention. There has yet to be a holistic view of online shopping acceptance from the perspective of consumers. In this research, we conducted an extensive survey of extant related studies and synthesized their findings into a reference model called OSAM (Online Shopping Acceptance Model) to explain consumer acceptance of online shopping. Our literature survey reveals that a myriad of factors have been examined in the context of online shopping and mixed results on those factors have been reported. The proposed model helps reconcile conflicting findings, discover recent trends in this line of research, and shed light on future research directions.

Please address correspondence regarding this manuscript to Arie Shirom at the above address. Burnout Discriminant Validity 2 We investigated the discriminant validity of the frequently used Burnout Measure (BM) (Pines et al., 1981), in relation to depressive symptomatology and anxiety. Following Russell’s (1980) work on the multidimensional space of affective states, BM’s items were hypothesized to reside in three separate regions of that space, labeled anxiety, depression, and wornout, with wornout representing a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion. Respondents were 704 senior army officers, who completed a questionnaire that included BM items, standard measures of depression and anxiety, and measures of military-related stresses. Their responses to the BM items and to the depression and anxiety scales were subjected to multidimensional scaling analysis. The results were supportive of the hypothesis and led to the construction of three unidimensional measures, respectively gauging anxiety, depression, and wornout. The correlations of the three measures with the stress measures supported their discriminant validity. We suggest that future research using the BM should focus on the set of items that were found to load on the dimension of wornout, to the exclusion of items tapping depression and anxiety. Burnout Discriminant Validity 3