Using Factorial Surveys to Study Justice Perceptions: Five Methodological Problems of Attitudinal Justice Research

Abstract

DFG Research Center (SFB) "From Heterogeneities to Inequalities"Whether fat or thin, male or female, young or old -people are different. Alongside their physical features, they also differ in terms of nationality and ethnicity; in their cultural preferences, lifestyles, attitudes, orientations, and philosophies; in their competencies, qualifications, and traits; and in their professions. But how do such heterogeneities lead to social inequalities? What are the social mechanisms that underlie this process? These are the questions pursued by the DFG Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB)) "From Heterogeneities to Inequalities" at Bielefeld University, which was approved by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as "SFB 882" on May 25, 2011.In the social sciences, research on inequality is dispersed across different research fields such as education, the labor market, equality, migration, health, or gender. One goal of the SFB is to integrate these fields, searching for common mechanisms in the emergence of inequality that can be compiled into a typology. More than fifty senior and junior researchers and the Bielefeld University Library are involved in the SFB. Along with sociologists, it brings together scholars from the Bielefeld University faculties of Business Administration and Economics, Educational Science, Health Science, and Law, as well as from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In addition to carrying out research, the SFB is concerned to nurture new academic talent, and therefore provides doctoral training in its own integrated Research Training Group. A data infrastructure project has also been launched to archive, prepare, and disseminate the data gathered. We assume that individuals evaluate inequalities in terms of whether they consider them just, and that they hold particular attitudes toward justice because, and as long as, these help them to attain their fundamental goals and to solve, especially, the problems that arise through cooperation with other people (cooperative relations). As a result, attitudes on justice are not viewed either as rigidly stable orientations across the life span or as "Sunday best beliefs" i.e. short-lived opinions that are adjusted continuously to fit situational interests. Instead, they are regarded as being shaped by the opportunities for learning and making comparisons in different phases of the life course and different social contexts. ResearchThe goal of the project is to use longitudinal survey data to explain why individuals have particular notions of justice. The key aspect is taken to be changes in the social contextparticularly households, social networks, or workplaces -in which individuals are embedded across their life course. This is because social contexts offer opportunities to make social comparisons and engage in social learning, processes that are decisive in the formation of particular attitudes to justice. The project will test this empirically by setting up a special longitud...

Deserving a Just Pension: A Factorial Survey Approach*

“…Factorial survey methodology seeks to overcome some of these limitations by asking justice evaluations for descriptions of concrete cases with different characteristics (i.e., the components of the referential structure) presented simultaneously. This technique was first developed by Peter Rossi (Rossi, ; Rossi and Anderson, ) and has been applied in studies in different areas of justice research (Castillo, ; Hermkens and Boerman, ; Jasso and Milgrom, ; Liebig, Sauer, and Friedhoff, ; Shamon and Dülmer, ).…”

“…This article focuses on identifying which pension recipients’ characteristics—such as educational level, gender, years in the workforce, children raised, among others—are taken into account by respondents when asked about just pension amounts. To reach our goal we implemented a factorial survey, which is a methodology where respondents are asked to rate the justice of a pension of several fictitious cases or vignettes (Dülmer, ; Jasso, ; Liebig, Sauer, and Friedhoff, ; Shamon and Dülmer, ; Schrenker, ), whose characteristics can then be analyzed in relation to different deservingness criteria. Based on literature that proposes merit as one of the main deservingness criteria in modern societies (Hadjar, ), a first research question is to what extent vignettes’ meritocratic characteristics (such as educational level and/or years in the workforce) outweigh equality considerations (such as having children and/or a dependent partner) in the judgment about what a just pension should be.…”

A turbine is not only a turbine: The role of social context and fairness characteristics for the local acceptance of wind power

“…The majority of studies investigating the influence of these factors on local acceptance of turbines in peoples' vicinities combine qualitative interviews with standardized questionnaires comprising attitudinal items (e.g., Zoellner et al, 2008) or use only standardized questionnaires comprising sets of attitudinal items (e.g., Musall and Kuik, 2011). While responses to attitudinal items are informative, they only focus on a single aspect and are more prone to socially desirable response behavior (Liebig et al 2015).…”

“…Similar to DCEs, FSEs are multifactorial and make it more difficult for respondents to not answer "truthfully". Compared to simple measurements in surveys, FSEs also allow for the identification of causal effects due to the experimental setup Liebig et al 2015). In contrast to DCEs, however, they do not use money as a common metric; respondents can express their level of agreement or disagreement on a rating scale.…”

How and Where Do We Ask Sensitive Questions: Self-reporting of STI-associated Symptoms Among the Iranian General Population

“…While some of these concerns could have been avoided through the use of cognitive interviewing which fix “the logic of the questionnaire,” 24 our pilot testing of the questionnaire might have been helpful in addressing some of these concerns. Given our timeline and resources, we were not able to conduct cognitive interviewing or use approaches like audio computer-assisted survey instrument (ACASI) which has been proven to decrease reporting biases significantly, 5 or factorial surveys and vignette studies that are less prone to social desirability bias 25 - 27 ; however, it is recommended for future studies.…”