Hi all,

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday in the Lab session!

>From around 4pm on Wednesday, I will be talking about a survey we are going to put into the field in the next few weeks. It is a simple but innovative survey about "Sludge" (~ frictions that make it harder for us to do what we want; the opposite of nudge). 

Many people in Behavioural Public Policy talk about the unequal effects of sludge, but so far nobody has quantified such inequalities using a survey.

A Word version of the survey is attached, and a short summary of the idea is below. I will only talk for 5 minutes or so to have enough time for your thoughts.

We'd be grateful for any feedback! Potential feedback relates to the sludge vignettes and ideas for new sludge vignettes (the DVs), the independent variables, whether we should present the data on vulnerability and acceptability in the same paper, what not to forget when pre-registering... And is anybody aware of simple survey measures for scarcity (time/money/energy), present bias, unrealistic optimism, limited attention?

Thanks in advance for your feedback and all the best,
Leo






The key idea of the survey is to present people with about 10 short descriptions such as:

"To apply for financial assistance from the government, you must fill out a lengthy form, providing lots of information that is already on government systems."

and then follow up with questions on vulnerability to sludge (e.g. would it be difficult for you to carry out this task?) as well as acceptability of sludge (e.g. Is this procedure acceptable?).

Then we test whether "vulnerability" and "acceptability" differ depending on (maybe a subset of) age, gender, education, employment status, ethnic group, marital status, living rural or urban, income, a measure of scarcity, physical health, mental health, having a disability, personality traits, trust in government, and left/right political leaning.

Here is a list of the sludge descriptions we have so far come up with. The below only shows sludge when interacting with government services. However, participants will randomly see sludge from either the public or the private sector so we can see differences there.


The quite simple analysis will be along these lines:

(1) Are some people more vulnerable to sludge than others? (OLS with random effects or clustered standard errors as we have up to 10 sludge vignettes per person.
(2) Is sludge seen as more acceptable by some than by others? (OLS with random effects or clustered standard errors)








From: PhD-BehSci <phd-behsci-bounces@lists.stir.ac.uk> on behalf of Till Stowasser <till.stowasser@stir.ac.uk>
Sent: 04 July 2024 20:05
To: phd-behsci Mailing List <phd-behsci@lists.stir.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Phd-behsci] PhD Lab meetings over the summer
 
Hi all,

Thank you to those who have answered the doodle poll. We have a clear winner: 10th of July.

So these are our PhD lab sessions during the Summer

Meeting 1: Wednesday, 10th of July, 14:30–16:00
Meeting 2: Wednesday, 31st of July, 11:00–12:30
Meeting 3: Wednesday, 28th of August, 11:00–12:30

I will send through invites via Teams in a minute.

Best,
Till




On 2 Jul 2024, at 11:58, Till Stowasser <till.stowasser@stir.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear PhD Lab,

I’d like to revisit our three PhD labs over the Summer. We have already found dates for Meetings 2 and 3 but we had to postpone Meeting 1 to TBD because of a clash with the Summer School that Hector is hosting.

Meeting 1: Wednesday, XXth of July
Meeting 2: Wednesday, 31st of July
Meeting 3: Wednesday, 28th of August

I would suggest to move the first meeting to next week (on MSTeams). I have availabilities on Tuesday to Friday that week. To find the date that best fits most of us, I have created the following doodle: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/eZmjYGgd

I’d be grateful if you could fill it in the doodle.

Best wishes,
Till

On 7 Jun 2024, at 14:50, Till Stowasser <till.stowasser@stir.ac.uk> wrote:

Follow-up 3rd of July won’t work as this collides with Hector’s SGPE Summer School (sorry, Hector, for this oversight).

We will have to move to the week before or after. @Simon: When are you back from leave?

I will let you know an alternative suggestion soonish. Can't commit quite yet as I am waiting for another event around that time to be confirmed.

Best,
Till

On 7 Jun 2024, at 14:00, Till Stowasser <till.stowasser@stir.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear PhD lab,

Apologies, I meant to send this through a lot sooner.

Shall we settle on a few dates to meet during the summer? I believe monthly meetings (on Teams) would make sense. That would give us three meetings until the beginning of the Autumn term.

Let’s have our first meeting once Simon is back from leave.

How about the following?

Meeting 1: Wednesday, 3rd of July
Meeting 2: Wednesday, 31st of July
Meeting 3: Wednesday, 28th of August

@Katie: Which one of these would you like to present in?

I will also schedule 1:1 meetings with all Stirling-based PhD students in June. Please let me know your availability.

Best,
Till
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Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159

Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159