Ulf Bockenholt

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Northwestern University

Prior research has suggested that consumers believe sustainable products tend to underperform compared with those made using traditional methods, a phenomenon referred to as the “sustainability liability.” Despite early conceptual justification and evidence supporting this argument, recent research has not attempted to validate this effect and asse...

In Nishisato’s dual-scaling framework, the analysis of rating data involves a specific type of data transformation that leads to rank order data. This transformation is referred to as successive categories and involves the creation of items corresponding to boundaries between the values of the rating scale. The resulting dual-scaling values for the...

In the last two years, consumers have experienced massive changes in consumption – whether due to shifts in habits; the changing information landscape; challenges to their identity, or new economic experiences of scarcity or abundance. What can we expect from these experiences? How are the world's leading thinkers applying both foundational knowled...

The basic random effects meta-analytic model is overwhelmingly dominant in psychological research. Indeed, it is typically employed even when more complex multilevel multivariate meta-analytic models are warranted. In this paper, we aim to help overcome challenges so that multilevel multivariate meta-analytic models will be more often employed in p...

Over the last decade, large-scale replication projects across the biomedical and social sciences have reported relatively low replication rates. In these large-scale replication projects, replication has typically been evaluated based on a single replication study of some original study and dichotomously as successful or failed. However, evaluation...

In high stakes assessments of personality and similar attributes, test takers may engage in impression management (aka faking). This article proposes to consider responses of every test taker as a potential mixture of "real" (or retrieved) answers to questions, and "ideal" answers intended to create a desired impression, with each type of response...

Ideally, survey respondents read and understand survey instructions, questions, and response scales, and provide answers that carefully reflect their beliefs, attitudes, or knowledge. However, respondents may also arrive at their responses using cues or heuristics that facilitate the production of a response, but diminish the targeted information c...

The common approach to meta‐analysis is overwhelmingly dominant in practice but suffers from a major limitation: it is suitable for analyzing only a single effect of interest. However, contemporary psychological research studies—and thus meta‐analyses of them—typically feature multiple dependent effects of interest. In this paper, we introduce nove...

Replication is an important contemporary issue in psychological research, and there is great interest in ways of assessing replicability, in particular, retrospectively via prior studies. The average power of a set of prior studies is a quantity that has attracted considerable attention for this purpose, and techniques to estimate this quantity via...

This proceedings volume highlights the latest research and developments in psychometrics and statistics. It represents selected and peer reviewed presentations given at the 84th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), organized by Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and held in Santiago, Chile during July 15th to 19th,...

We propose an econometric two-stage model for category-level purchase and brand-level purchase that allows for simultaneous brand purchases in the analysis of scanner panel data. The proposed model formulation is consistent with the traditional theory of consumer behavior. We conduct Bayesian estimation with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm f...

Meta-analysis typically involves the analysis of summary data (e.g., means, standard deviations, and sample sizes) from a set of studies via a statistical model that is a special case of a hierarchical (or multilevel) model. Unfortunately, the common summary-data approach to meta-analysis used in psychological research is often employed in settings...

This paper presents a systematic investigation of how affirmative and polar-opposite items presented either jointly or separately affect yea-saying tendencies. We measure these yea-saying tendencies with item response models that estimate a respondent’s tendency to give a “yea”-response that may be unrelated to the target trait. In a re-analysis of...

Recent applications of item response tree models demonstrate that this model class is well suited to detect midpoint and extremity response style effects in both attitudinal and personality measurements. This paper proposes an extension of this approach that goes beyond measuring response styles and allows us to examine item‐feature effects. In a r...

Blakeley B. McShane and Ulf Böckenholt argue for single paper meta‐analysis to be the default statistical tool whenever multiple similar studies of a common phenomenon are published in one paper Blakeley B. McShane and Ulf Böckenholt argue for single paper meta‐analysis to be the default statistical tool whenever multiple similar studies of a commo...

Objective: To investigate individual preferences for physical activity (PA) attributes in adults with chronic knee pain, to identify clusters of individuals with similar preferences, and to identify whether individuals in these clusters differ by their demographic and health characteristics. Design: An adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA) was conduc...

Decision research has experienced a shift from simple algebraic theories of choices to an appreciation of mental processes that precede and produce those choices. An important development has been an increasing number and variety of process-tracing methods that can help verifying these assumed process explanations. Here, we provide a comprehensive...

We discuss replication, specifically large scale replication projects such as the Many Labs project (Klein et al., 2014), the Open Science Collaboration (OSC) project (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), and Registered Replication Reports (RRRs; Simons, Holcombe, and Spellman (2014)), in contemporary psychology. Our focus is on a key difference betw...

Replication is complicated in psychological research because studies of a given psychological phenomenon can never be direct or exact replications of one another, and thus effect sizes vary from one study of the phenomenon to the next--an issue of clear importance for replication. Current large scale replication projects represent an important step...

Decision research has experienced a shift from simple algebraic theories of choice to an appreciation of mental processes underlying choice. A variety of process-tracing methods has helped researchers test these process explanations. Here, we provide a survey of these methods, including specific examples for subject reports, movement-based measures...

To promote services and products, marketers often prompt consumers' imagination through advertisements that include imagery appeals (e.g., "Imagine yourself here"). Yet, previous research shows that these appeals are ineffective among consumers with lower imagery ability who find it difficult to imagine the scenes presented in the advertisement. In...

We introduce multilevel multivariate meta-analysis methodology designed to account for the complexity of contemporary psychological research data. Our methodology directly models the observations from a set of studies in a manner that accounts for the variation and covariation induced by the facts that observations differ in their dependent measure...

Two different item response theory model frameworks have been proposed for the assessment and control of response styles in rating data. According to one framework, response styles can be assessed by analysing threshold parameters in Rasch models for ordinal data and in mixture-distribution extensions of such models. A different framework is provid...

A typical behavioral research paper features multiple studies of a common phenomenon that are analyzed solely in isolation. Because the studies are of a common phenomenon, this practice is inefficient and foregoes important benefits that be obtained only by analyzing them jointly in a single paper meta-analysis (SPM). To facilitate SPM, we introduc...

In survey research, it is often problematic to ask people sensitive questions because they may refuse to answer or they may provide a socially desirable answer that does not reveal their true status on the sensitive question. To solve this problem Warner (1965) proposed randomized response (RR). Here, a chance mechanism hides why respondents say ye...

Objective: To describe the qualitative process used to develop attributes and attribute levels for inclusion in a discrete choice experiments (DCE) for older adult physical activity interventions. Design: Five focus groups (a total of 41 participants) were conducted, grounded in the Health Action Process Approach framework. Discussion emphasized...

The recently proposed class of item response tree models provides a flexible framework for modeling multiple response processes. This feature is particularly attractive for understanding how response styles may affect answers to attitudinal questions. Facilitating the disassociation of response styles and attitudinal traits, item response tree mode...

We review and evaluate selection methods, a prominent class of techniques first proposed by Hedges (1984) that assess and adjust for publication bias in meta-analysis, via an extensive simulation study. Our simulation covers both restrictive settings as well as more realistic settings and proceeds across multiple metrics that assess different aspec...

In survey research, it is often problematic to ask people sensitive questions because they may refuse to answer or they may provide a socially desirable answer that does not reveal their true status on the sensitive question. To solve this problem Warner (1965) proposed randomized response (RR). Here, a chance mechanism hides why respondents say ye...

Current psychometric models of choice behavior are strongly influenced by Thurstone’s (1927) experimental and statistical work on measuring and scaling preferences. Aided by advances in computational techniques, preference models can now accommodate a wide range of data types and sources of preference variability among respondents induced by divers...

Statistical power and thus the sample size required to achieve some desired level of power depend on the size of the effect of interest. However, effect sizes are seldom known exactly in psychological research. Instead, researchers often possess an estimate of an effect size as well as a measure of its uncertainty (e.g., a standard error or confide...

Using a meta-analysis of 142 experimental observations, this work examines the influence of different research design and outcome measures on extremeness aversion (i.e., the propensity to avoid extreme options in choice situations). The results indicate that extremeness aversion is a robust phenomenon: middle options are significantly more often se...

Deciding whether to use single-versus multi-item scales remains a controversial topic (Bergkvist 2015; Bergkvist and Roberts 2007; Kamakura 2015). Much of the fervor behind the single-versus multi-item scale discussion stems from an understandable desire to (a) find the "right" answer and (b) to automate and standardize research methods. Unfortunat...

The conventional randomized response design is unidimensional in the sense that it measures a single dimension of a sensitive attribute, like its prevalence, frequency, magnitude, or duration. This paper introduces a multidimensional design characterized by categorical questions that each measure a different aspect of the same sensitive attribute....

Despite the voluminous evidence in support of the paradoxical finding that providing individuals with more options can be detrimental to choice, the question of whether and when large assortments impede choice remains open. Even though extant research has identified a variety of antecedents and consequences of choice overload, the findings of the i...

Statistical power depends on the size of the effect of interest. However, effect sizes are rarely fixed in psychological research: Study design choices, such as the operationalization of the dependent variable or the treatment manipulation, the social context, the subject pool, or the time of day, typically cause systematic variation in the effect...

IntroductionWe heartily congratulate Bartolucci, Farcomeni, and Pennoni for their review of latent Markov (LM) models (Bartolucci et al. 2014). Not only have they provided a succinct and thorough guide that will benefit researchers seeking to employ LM models for many years to come, but they also have offered their suggestions on a number of furthe...

In many domains, consumers must deal with an increasing number of choices-spanning where, when, what, and how many items to buy; how many and which options to consider; and how best to weigh the pros and cons of these options. This paper considers how consumer and managerial goals and the ensuing tradeoffs affect the optimal design of assortments i...

Loss aversion is a behavioral phenomenon with game-changing implications for economic theory and practice. We conduct a meta-analysis of 33 studies (providing 109 observations) investigating loss aversion in random utility models of brand choice. Specifically, we use multilevel modeling techniques to examine potential moderators of preference asymm...

Because frequently random assignment is not feasible in educational studies, our understanding of causal effects of student characteristics on academic performance has made little progress over the years. Omitted variables inducing correlations between regressors and error terms in multilevel data are a major hurdle. If the independence assumption...

In survey research it is often problematic to ask people sensitive questions because they may refuse to answer or they may provide a socially desirable answer that does not reveal their true status on the sensitive question. To solve this problem Warner (1965) proposed randomized response (RR). Here a chance mechanism hides why respondents say “yes...

Asking sensitive or personal questions in surveys or experimental studies can both lower response rates and increase item non-response and misreports. Although non-response is easily diagnosed, misreports are not. However, misreports cannot be ignored because they give rise to systematic bias. The purpose of this paper is to present a modeling appr...

In this article, I show how item response models can be used to capture multiple response processes in psychological applications. Intuitive and analytical responses, agree–disagree answers, response refusals, socially desirable responding, differential item functioning, and choices among multiple options are considered. In each of these cases, I s...

In this article, I show how item response models can be used to capture multiple response processes in psychological applications. Intuitive and analytical responses, agree-disagree answers, response refusals, socially desirable responding, differential item functioning, and choices among multiple options are considered. In each of these cases, I s...

In a number of psychological studies, answers to reasoning vignettes have been shown to result from both intuitive and deliberate response processes. This paper utilizes a psychometric model to separate these two response tendencies. An experimental application shows that the proposed model facilitates the analysis of dual-process item responses an...

Rankings, in contrast to ratings, eliminate effects of individual differences in scale usage and avoid arbitrary definitions regarding the number of response categories and category labels. However, despite the appeal and popularity of this technique, few methods are available for the analysis of rankings on several attributes. This paper presents...

This paper introduces a mixture regression model for the analysis and interpretation of multivariate count data in a heterogeneous population. The model is derived by specifying a regression relationship at the individual level between the choice data and a set of concomitant variables. A latent class representation is introduced to describe variat...

Thurstonian models have proven useful in a wide range of applications because they can describe the multidimensional nature of choice objects and the effects of similarity and comparability in choice situations. This paper presents a unified framework for applying the Thurstonian approach to partial ranking data that includes paired comparison data...

Loss aversion and reference dependence are 2 keystones of behavioral theories of choice, but little is known about their underlying cognitive processes. We suggest an additional account for loss aversion that supplements the current account of the value encoding of attributes as gains or losses relative to a reference point, introducing a value con...

Random Utility models have been shown useful in scaling choice options, as well as in providing a rich source of information about individual differences and perceived similarity relationships among choice alternatives. Modeling of preference data such as rankings was made easier by representing utilities as latent factors in a structural equation...

Research on social capital and health has assumed that measures of trust, participation, and perceived cohesion capture aspects of people's neighborhood social connections. This study uses data on the personal networks of 2707 Montreal adults in 300 different neighborhoods to examine the association of socio-demographic and social capital variables...

Can there ever be too many options? We argue that because choice overload has multiple antecedents, simply searching for a main effect across all conditions and a single "sufficient" condition that is likely to solely predict this effect is not informative. Moreover, because prior research has documented multiple instances in which an abundance of...

Recent research has suggested that perceived control and a person's perceptions of their neighborhood environment may mediate the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health. This cross-sectional study assessed whether perceptions of informal social control mediated the association between SES and self-reported health, and if these tw...

Randomized response is a misclassification design to estimate the prevalence of sensitive behaviour. Respondents who do not follow the instructions of the design are considered to be cheating. A mixture model is proposed to estimate the prevalence of sensitive behaviour and cheating in the case of a dual sampling scheme with direct questioning and...

Parks provide benefits for the physical, psychological, and social well-being of residents in neighborhood environments. Multilevel logistic regression was used to examine associations between neighborhood- and individual-level characteristics and the lack of park use in Montreal. Data on park use were collected from 787 adults residing in 299 diff...

This appendix lists a number of books, chapters, and articles that may prove useful to those who wish to learn more about latent class analysis. Although the listing is by no means exhaustive, an effort has been made to include many of the most widely known sources. We have selected a set of general headings with which to separate the various works...

Out of the toolbox of survey methods for obtaining honest answers to sensitive issues, the method of randomized responses (RR) has proven to be the most effective one. So far, in applications of RR methods it has been assumed that they eliminate response biases. We investigate the validity of this assumption by applying multivariate RR models that...

A review of the econometric literature on instrumental variables (IV) estimation shows that the performance of traditional IV estimation relies critically on the quality of the instruments. We discuss three different approaches that do not require the availability of observed instrumental variables: the ‘Higher Moments’ (HM) estimator, the ‘Identif...

We propose an extension of Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem based on the representation of ignorance as the set of all possible probability distributions over individuals. We obtain a characterization of the observer's preferences that, under our most restrictive conditions, is a convex combination of Harsanyi's utilitarian and Rawls' egalitar...

Apparent low usage of formal decision techniques by general clinicians has raised questions about dissemination methods and about the techniques' perceived usefulness. Two literature searches examined whether use of formal decision techniques among clinicians had indeed failed to increase from the 1970s to the 1980s. A general MEDLINE search for th...

Canonical models of rational choice fail to account for many forms of motivated adaptive behaviors, specifically in domains such as food selections. To describe behavior in such emotion- and reward-laden scenarios, researchers have proposed dual-process models that posit competition between a slower, analytic faculty and a fast, impulsive, emotiona...

of Medical Care, Krabbe1 provides us with a much needed discussion of the potential usefulness of Thurstone's approach for quantifying subjective health outcomes using ordinal information, such as rankings. As pointed out eloquently by Krabbe, Thurstone's articles,2,3 have had a tremendous influence on the development of methods for collecting and...

In 2004 the Dutch Department of Social Affairs conducted a survey to assess the extent of noncompliance with social security regulations. The survey was conducted among 870 recipients of social security benefits and included a series of sensitive questions about regulatory noncompliance. Due to the sensitive nature of the questions the randomized r...

Most probabilistic paired comparison models treat inconsistent choices as caused by independent and random errors in the pairwise judgments. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is too restrictive for the analysis of paired comparison data obtained from multiple judges when transitivity violations are systematic. We present a new framework...

Randomized response is a method for intentionally misclassifying or perturbing part of a data set. This misclassification can be done either in data collection by a respondent following instructions for misclassification laid out by a researcher, or in a statistical disclosure control setting by a researcher after the data are collected. Both appli...

Randomized response (RR) is an interview technique designed to eliminate response bias when sensitive questions are asked. In RR the answer depends partly on the true status of the respondent and partly on the outcome of a randomizing device. Although RR elicits more honest answers than direct questions do, it is susceptible to self-protective resp...

This article examines the influence of consumers' motivational orientations on their susceptibilities to context effects. Prevention-focused consumers were found to be more sensitive to the compromise effect and less sensitive to the attraction effect than promotion-focused consumers. In addition, the effects of promotion and prevention motivations...

Randomized response (RR) is a well-known method for measuring sensitive behavior. Yet this method is not often applied because: (i) of its lower efficiency and the resulting need for larger sample sizes which make applications of RR costly; (ii) despite its privacy-protection mechanism the RR design may not be followed by every respondent; and (iii...

Randomized response (RR) is an interview technique that ensures confidentiality when sensitive questions are asked. In RR the answer to a sensitive question is partly determined by a randomizing device. Respondent may nevertheless feel uncomfortable with the RR design and give the least sensitive response, irrespective of the outcome of the randomi...

Most statistical models for the analysis of choice data also referred to as “preference models,” have been developed for response settings to serve the dual purpose of summarizing choice outcomes and of facilitating the forecasting of choices made by the judges facing possibly new or different variants of the choice options. Thus, preference models...

Current psychometric models of choice behavior are strongly influenced by Thurstone's (1927, 1931) experimental and statistical work on measuring and scaling preferences. Aided by advances in computational techniques, choice models can now accommodate a wide range of different data types and sources of preference variability among respondents induc...

Methods of comparative judgments such as paired comparisons and rankings share one common problem: They do not allow recovering the origin of the stimulus evaluations. One stimulus may be judged more positively than another but this result does not allow any conclusions about whether either of the stimuli are attractive or unattractive. This articl...

Current models for individual-level paired comparison data are based on the three assumptions that (1) pairwise judgments are independent, (2) the utility of an item remains invariant across trials, and (3) pair-specific variability can account for intransitive choice behaviour. All three assumptions seem strong and likely to be violated in empiric...

This paper presents a hierarchical Bayes circumplex model for ordinal ratings data. The circumplex model was proposed to represent the circular ordering of items in psychological testing by imposing inequalities on the correlations of the items. We provide a specification of the circumplex, propose identifying constraints and conjugate priors for t...

Abstract: Randomized response (RR) is an interview technique designed to elim- inate response bias when sensitive questions are asked. In RR the answer depends to a certain degree on the outcome of a randomizing device. Although RR elicits more honest answers than direct questions, respondents do not always follow the instructions and in the sense...

Scaling models for preferential choice data serve the dual purpose to summarize choice data and to facilitate the forecasting of choices by decision makers facing possibly new or different variants of the choice options. The summary representation obtained by scaling methods can provide useful information for identifying both option characteristics...

L. L. Thurstone's (1927) model provides a powerful framework for modeling individual differences in choice behavior. An overview of Thurstonian models for comparative data is provided, including the classical Case V and Case III models as well as more general choice models with unrestricted and factor-analytic covariance structures. A flow chart su...

Markov models provide a general framework for analyzing and interpreting time dependencies in psychological applications. Recent work extended Markov models to the case of latent states because frequently psychological states are not directly observable and subject to measurement error. This article presents a further generalization of latent Marko...

This paper has two main contributions. Firstly, we introduce a new approach, the latent instrumental variables (LIV) method, to estimate regression coefficients consistently in a simple linear regression model where regressor-error correlations (endogeneity) are likely to be present. The LIV method utilizes a discrete latent variable model that acc...

Although comparative judgment methods have a number of distinct advantages over ratings, they share one common problem: On the basis of comparative judgments, it is not possible to recover the origin of item evaluations. One item may be judged more positively than another, but this result does not allow any conclusions about whether either of the i...

The objectives of this paper are (1) to review methods that can be used to test for different types of random effects and regressor dependencies, (2) to present results from Monte Carlo studies designed to investigate the performance of these methods, and (3) to discuss estimation methods that can be used when some but not all of the random effects...

Randomized response (RR) is a well known method for measuring sensitive behavior. Yet it is not often applied. Two possible reasons for this are (i) its lower eciency and the resulting need for larger sample sizes, making applications of RR expensive, (ii) the notion that in many applications the RR design may not be followed by every respondent ('...

Multivariate count data are commonly analysed by using Poisson distributions with varying intensity parameters, resulting in a random-effects model. In the analysis of a data set on the frequency of different emotion experiences we find that a Poisson model with a single random effect does not yield an adequate fit. An alternative model that requir...

We develop a general class of factor-analytic models for the analysis of multivariate (truncated) count data. Dependencies in multivariate counts are of interest in many applications, but few approaches have been proposed for their analysis. Our model class allows for a variety of distributions of the factors in the exponential family. The proposed...

The paper presents a multilevel framework for the analysis of multivariate count data that are observed over several time periods for a random sample of individuals. The approach proposed facilitates studying observed and unobserved sources of dependences among the event categories in the presence of possibly higher order autoregressive effects. In...

Ratings of affect words are the most commonly used method to assess pleasant affect (PA) and unpleasant affect (UA). The reliance on self-reports would be problematic if affect ratings were heavily influenced by response styles. Several recent publications have indeed suggested (a) that the influence of response styles on affect ratings is pervasiv...

This paper presents a Thurstonian model for the analysis of preference change. Preferences are expressed in the form of rankings, possibly with ties. A vector-autoregression framework is used to investigate relationships between past and current rankings. It is shown that this approach yields a parsimonious and easily interpretable representation o...

The method of paired comparisons became popular in psychological research with Thurstone’s [Psychometrika 65 (1927) 233] demonstration that attitudes can be scaled along a one-dimensional continuum. Despite a large number of applications of this method over the years, it has been noted only recently that paired comparison data do not only contain i...

In the analysis of time-dependent choice data, it is important to take into account that individuals differ both in their preferences at a particular point in time and in the way they change their preferences over time. As a solution to this problem, this paper adopts Humphreys (1998) random-effects approach and combines the family of discrete-time...

Thurstonian models provide a flexible framework for the analysis of multiple paired comparison judgments because they allow a wide range of hypotheses about the judgments' mean and covariance structures to be tested. However, applications have been limited to a large extent by the computational intractability involved in fitting this class of model...

Many paired comparison data sets reported in the literature are obtained in a multiple judgment setting where each judge compares all possible item pairs one at a time. Despite the repeated measures structure of the data, typically the multiple judgments are analyzed under the strong assumption of independence. This disregard for dependencies in th...