Conjoint Survey Experiment

A conjoint survey experiment presents respondents with profiles — of candidates, immigrants, policies, or products — described by several attributes whose levels are independently randomized, and asks respondents to choose between or rate the profiles. Hainmueller, Hopkins, and Yamamoto's 2014 framework places this design on a rigorous causal footing, defining the average marginal component effect (AMCE) as the design-based causal effect of an attribute level, averaged over the randomization distribution of all other attributes. It lets political scientists estimate the relative causal weight of many decision factors simultaneously from realistic, multidimensional choices.