Factorial Survey Experiment

A factorial survey experiment, often simply called a factorial survey, asks respondents to judge short descriptions — vignettes — whose multiple features are fully crossed and randomly varied. By factorially combining many dimensions, each at several levels, the design generates a large universe of vignettes; respondents rate a random sample of them, and regression of the ratings on the dimension levels recovers the independent causal effect of each feature on judgment. It scales the single-scenario vignette experiment up to many simultaneously manipulated attributes.