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Article
Publication date: 14 August 2017

Dominik Jung, Marc Adam, Verena Dorner and Anuja Hariharan

Human lab experiments have become an established method in information systems research for investigating user behavior, perception and even neurophysiology. The purpose of this…

Abstract

Purpose

Human lab experiments have become an established method in information systems research for investigating user behavior, perception and even neurophysiology. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate experimental research by providing a practical guide on how to implement and conduct lab experiments in the freely available experimental platform Brownie.

Design/methodology/approach

Laying the groundwork of the tutorial, the paper first provides a brief overview of common design considerations for lab experiments and a generic session framework. Building on the use case of the widely used trust game, the paper then covers the different stages involved in running an experimental session and maps the conceptual elements of the study design to the implementation of the experimental software.

Findings

The paper generates findings on how computerized lab experiments can be designed and implemented. Furthermore, it maps out the design considerations an experimenter may take into account when implementing an experiment and organizing it along a session structure (e.g. participant instructions, individual and group interaction, state and trait questionnaires).

Originality/value

The paper reduces barriers for researchers to engage in experiment implementation and replication by providing a step-by-step tutorial for the design and implementation of human lab experiments.

Details

Journal of Systems and Information Technology, vol. 19 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1328-7265

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 September 2019

Nuno Costa

The purpose of this paper is to address misconceptions about the design of experiments (DoE) usefulness, avoid bad practices and foster processes’ efficiency and products’ quality…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to address misconceptions about the design of experiments (DoE) usefulness, avoid bad practices and foster processes’ efficiency and products’ quality in a timely and cost-effective manner with this tool.

Design/methodology/approach

To revisit and discuss the hindrances to DoE usage as well as bad practices in using this tool supported on the selective literature from Web of Science and Scopus indexed journals.

Findings

A set of recommendations and guidelines to mitigate DoE hindrances and avoid common errors or wrong decisions at the planning, running and data analysis phases of DoE are provided.

Research limitations/implications

Errors or wrong decisions in planning, running and analyzing data from statistically designed experiments are always possible so the expected results from DoE usage are not always 100 percent guaranteed.

Practical implications

Novice and intermediate DoE users have another perspective for developing and improving their “test and learn” capability and be successful with DoE. To appropriately plan and run statistically designed experiments not only save the user of DoE from incorrect decisions and depreciation of their technical competencies as they can optimize processes’ efficiency and products’ quality (reliability, durability, performance, robustness, etc.) in a structured, faster and cheaper way at the design and manufacturing stages.

Social implications

DoE usefulness will be increasingly recognized in industry and academy and, as consequence, better products can be made available for consumers, business performance can improve, and the link between industry and academy can be strengthened.

Originality/value

A supplemental perspective on how to succeed with DoE and foster its usage among managers, engineers and other technical staff is presented.

Article
Publication date: 24 September 2018

Carola Grebitus and Jutta Roosen

The purpose of this research is to test how varying the numbers of attributes and alternatives affects the use of heuristics and selective information processing in discrete…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to test how varying the numbers of attributes and alternatives affects the use of heuristics and selective information processing in discrete choice experiments (DCEs). The effects of visual attribute and alternative non-attendance (NA) on respondent choices are analyzed.

Design/methodology/approach

Two laboratory experiments that combined eye tracking and DCEs were conducted with 109 and 117 participants in the USA. The DCEs varied in task complexity by the number of product attributes and alternatives.

Findings

Results suggest that participants ignore both single attributes and entire alternatives. Increasing the number of alternatives significantly increased attribute NA. Including NA in choice modeling influenced results more in more complex DCEs.

Research limitations/implications

The current experiments did not test for choice overload. Future studies could investigate more complex designs. The choice environment affects decision-making. Future research could compare laboratory and field experiments.

Practical implications

Private and public sectors often use DCEs to determine consumer preference. Results suggest that DCEs with two alternatives are superior to DCEs with four alternatives because NA was lower in the two-alternative design.

Originality/value

This empirical research examined effects of attribute and alternative NA on choice modeling using eye tracking and DCEs with varying degrees of task complexity. Results suggest that accounting for NA reduces the risk of over- or understating the impact of attributes on choice, in that one avoids claiming significance for attributes that might not truly be preferred, and vice versa.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 52 no. 9/10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 February 2019

Jiju Antony, Stavros Karamperidis, Frenie Antony and Elizabeth A. Cudney

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the power of experimental design as a technique to understand and evaluate the most important factors which influence teaching…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the power of experimental design as a technique to understand and evaluate the most important factors which influence teaching effectiveness for a postgraduate course in a higher education (HE) context.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology involves the execution of a case study in the form of an experiment in a business school setting. The experiment was carried out with the assistance of over 100 postgraduate students from 26 countries. The data were collected over a two year period (2015 and 2016) from a postgraduate course offered by the same tutor for repeatability reasons.

Findings

The key findings of the experiment have clearly indicated that students’ perceptions of teaching effectiveness based on intuition and guesswork are not identical to the outcomes from a simple designed experiment. Moreover, the results of the experiment provided a greater stimulus for the wider applications of the technique to other processes across the case study HE sector.

Research limitations/implications

One of the limitations of the study is that the experiment was conducted for a popular postgraduate course. It would be beneficial to understand the results of the experiment for less popular postgraduate courses in the university in order to drive improvements. Moreover, this research was conducted only for postgraduate courses and the results may vary for undergraduate courses. This would be an interesting study to understand the differences in the factors between undergraduate and postgraduate teaching effectiveness.

Practical implications

The outcome of this experiment would help everyone who is involved in teaching to understand the factors and their influences to improve students’ satisfaction scores during the delivery of teaching.

Originality/value

This paper shows how experimental design as a pure manufacturing technique can be extended to a HE setting.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 36 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 21 August 2012

Shane Greenstein

Purpose – What role did economic experiments play in creating value in the commercial market for wireless Internet access? Rosenberg (1992, p. 181) defines such experiments

Abstract

Purpose – What role did economic experiments play in creating value in the commercial market for wireless Internet access? Rosenberg (1992, p. 181) defines such experiments broadly, “to include experimentation with new forms of economic organization as well as the better-known historical experiments that have been responsible for new products and new manufacturing technologies.”

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter provides an overview of the experience of a number of firms, focusing on the period between the late 1990s and early part of the 21st century, when the technology first blossomed in commercial markets. The chapter uses the experience of Lucent and Intel as primary illustrations of key concepts, and the chapter discusses how the framework generalizes beyond the experience of these two firms.

Findings – The distinction between directed and undirected experiments helps understand events in the evolution of Wi-Fi's value. They also bring new perspective to an extensive debate in communications policy about the best way to assign and allocate spectrum, focusing on the importance of the regulatory decision to provide space in which experiments can take place.

Originality/value – This framework has value for business history of the commercial Internet. This lens stresses the importance of preserving discretion to move business away from applications with low value, namely, away from allocations that used a conceptualization of the technology founded on a poor-use case, which later lessons showed had lower value than alternatives.

Details

History and Strategy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-024-6

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 August 2020

Dieter Koemle and Xiaohua Yu

This paper reviews the current literature on theoretical and methodological issues in discrete choice experiments, which have been widely used in non-market value analysis, such…

9206

Abstract

Purpose

This paper reviews the current literature on theoretical and methodological issues in discrete choice experiments, which have been widely used in non-market value analysis, such as elicitation of residents' attitudes toward recreation or biodiversity conservation of forests.

Design/methodology/approach

We review the literature, and attribute the possible biases in choice experiments to theoretical and empirical aspects. Particularly, we introduce regret minimization as an alternative to random utility theory and sheds light on incentive compatibility, status quo, attributes non-attendance, cognitive load, experimental design, survey methods, estimation strategies and other issues.

Findings

The practitioners should pay attention to many issues when carrying out choice experiments in order to avoid possible biases. Many alternatives in theoretical foundations, experimental designs, estimation strategies and even explanations should be taken into account in practice in order to obtain robust results.

Originality/value

The paper summarizes the recent developments in methodological and empirical issues of choice experiments and points out the pitfalls and future directions both theoretically and empirically.

Details

Forestry Economics Review, vol. 2 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2631-3030

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 November 2004

Athanasis Karoulis, Panagiotis Sfetsos, Ioannis Stamelos, Lefteris Angelis and Andreas Pombortsis

This study is concerned with the formal assessment of a Distance Learning Environment (DLE) created to deliver a course on UML sequence diagrams to university‐level students…

Abstract

This study is concerned with the formal assessment of a Distance Learning Environment (DLE) created to deliver a course on UML sequence diagrams to university‐level students, divided into control and treatment groups. An ad‐hoc DLE was constructed to deliver instruction to the treatment group, while the control group was taught in a traditional face‐to‐face way. The main point of concern is whether a DLE can be as effective for the treatment group, as the faceto‐ face lecture is for the control group, in terms of gaining mastery on the domain. So, a controlled experiment was organized and executed, in order to measure the participants’ performance in both groups. The results have shown no statistically significant difference for both groups of students. So, it can be argued that in the context of this experiment and by following a DLE‐design close enough to the traditional face‐to‐face approach, one can obtain equally good results using distance learning as with the traditional system. However, a number of concerns remain and more work is needed to generalize the results of this work on other domains.

Details

Interactive Technology and Smart Education, vol. 1 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-5659

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 March 2016

Robin Bouwman and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen

Based on previous inventories, the purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on public administration experiments by focusing on their experimental type, design, sample…

3925

Abstract

Purpose

Based on previous inventories, the purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on public administration experiments by focusing on their experimental type, design, sample type and realism levels and external validity. The aim is to provide an overview of experimental public administration and formulate potential ways forward.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors examine the current state of experimental public administration, by looking at a systematic selection of ISI ranked experimental publications in major public administration journals (1992-2014) and recommend ways forward based on this review.

Findings

The review indicates a rise in experimentation in public administration in recent years, this can be attributed mostly to some subfields of public administration. Furthermore, most experiments in public administration tend to have relatively simple designs, high experimental realism and a focus on external validity. Experimental public administration can be strengthened by increasing diversification in terms of samples, experimental designs, experimental types and substantive scope. Finally, the authors recommend to better utilize experiments to generate usable knowledge for practitioners and to replicate experiments to improve scientific rigour.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to experimental public administration by drawing on a systematic selection of papers and assessing them in depth. By means of a transparent and systematic selection of publications, various venues or ways forward are presented.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 29 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 May 2005

Glenn W. Harrison, Morten Igel Lau, Elisabet E. Rutström and Melonie B. Sullivan

We design experiments to jointly elicit risk and time preferences for the adult Danish population. The experimental procedures build on laboratory experiments that have used…

Abstract

We design experiments to jointly elicit risk and time preferences for the adult Danish population. The experimental procedures build on laboratory experiments that have used traditional subject pools. The field experiments utilize field sampling designs that we developed, and procedures that were chosen to be relatively transparent in the field with non-standard subject pools. Our overall design was also intended to be a general template for such field experiments in other countries. We examine the characterization of risk over a wider domain for each subject than previous experiments, allowing more precise estimates of risk attitudes. We also examine individual discount rates over six time horizons, as the first stage in a panel experiment in which we revisit subjects to test consistency and stability of responses over time. Risk and time preferences are heterogeneous, varying by observable individual characteristics. On a methodological level, we implement a refinement of existing procedures which elicits much more precise estimates, and also mitigates framing effects.

Details

Field Experiments in Economics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-174-3

Article
Publication date: 21 April 2020

Ciarán McFadden

This paper discusses the factors to consider when designing studies to measure hiring discrimination against transgender job applicants.

2124

Abstract

Purpose

This paper discusses the factors to consider when designing studies to measure hiring discrimination against transgender job applicants.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper builds on academic literature related to hiring discrimination and transgender employment to build a detailed discussion of the numerous factors and issues inherent in hiring discrimination against transgender job applicants. By isolating and describing a number of relevant considerations, the paper aims to act as a guide for future studies to build upon.

Findings

Three types of hiring discrimination studies are discussed: correspondence tests, in-person experiments and student cohort experiments. Three main categories of factors relevant to an experiment’s design are then discussed: the legal context, industry/role factors and transgender population-specific factors. A flow-chart detailing the research design decision-making process is provided.

Research limitations/implications

The discussion within this paper will act as a reference and a guide for researchers seeking to address the dearth of empirical studies in the literature. The list is not exhaustive; while a number of factors relevant to transgender-specific studies are identified, there may be more that could affect an experiment's design.

Originality/value

Hiring discrimination against transgender people has been recorded in many surveys, but there is little empirical measurement of this discrimination. To the author's knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the experimental design decisions related to transgender hiring discrimination. In doing so, it provides contributions for two primary audiences: those researching transgender employment issues but who have never conducted a study measuring hiring discrimination; and those who have previously conducted studies on hiring discrimination, but have not done so with reference to transgender job applicants.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 41 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

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