Abstraction in Experimental Design: Testing the Tradeoffs.
(with Ryan Brutger, Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon). Cambridge University
Press, Elements in Experimental Political Science series. 2022.
[Overview]
In our book we explore the consequences of abstraction and detail in experimental design and innovate both theoretically and empirically. We offer an overarching
conceptual framework outlining three different dimensions of abstraction implicated
in experimental design: situational hypotheticality, actor identity, and contextual detail. We then test our theoretical framework by fielding eight survey experiments manipulating levels of abstraction
along our three theorized dimensions. Doing so, we explore how experimental
results change when varying different levels of abstraction in experimental stimuli.