ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

Back to Overview of Sessions

Session Details

Factorial surveys and conjoint experiments are widely used in the social sciences to study decision-making processes, intentions, preferences, and social norms. A key advantage of these approaches is that they allow for the identification of causal effects, by randomly varying attributes of hypothetical scenarios, and can be fielded on large-scale samples of the general population. Recent developments in AI further offer new opportunities for designing and implementing survey experiments. At the same time, both traditional and AI-enhanced survey experiments raise ethical and methodological challenges, for example regarding vignette design, measurement error, social desirability, and deception.

This session aims to bring together scholars working on methodological advancements of factorial surveys and conjoint experiments. We welcome contributions that evaluate the data quality of these methods, propose novel designs and analytical approaches, or demonstrate innovative applications in substantive areas. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Innovative designs and presentation formats
• Use of AI for creating text-, image-, or video-based vignettes
• Measurement error, social desirability, and external validity
• Complexity of vignettes and respondent burden
• Respondent recruitment and nonresponse error
• Sampling designs and estimation methods
• Integration with new data sources
• Ethical considerations in survey experiments
• Innovative applications in research on public opinion, social inequalities, labour market, health, migration, climate change, and other substantive domains