Endorsement Experiment

An endorsement experiment indirectly measures latent support for a sensitive or stigmatized actor by randomizing whether a policy is attributed to that actor and comparing how respondents' support for the policy shifts. Formalized statistically by Bullock, Imai, and Shapiro in 2011 to measure support for militant groups in Pakistan, the design infers favorability toward an actor that respondents would not safely disclose directly from the change in policy support it induces, typically estimated with hierarchical item-response models.