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Happy Halloween!

OK. This actually a survey-related post. I read this short article about an experiment where some kids got a candy bar and other kids got a candy bar and a piece of gum. The latter group was less happy. Seems counter-intuitive, but in the latter group, the "trajectory" of the qaulity of treats is getting worse. Turns out that this is a phenomenon that other psychologists have studied.

This might be a potential mechanism to explain why sequence matters in some mixed-mode studies. Assuming that other factors aren't confounding the issue.
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  1. UnknownOctober 31, 2014 at 4:15 PM

    Going through a different direction, but to the same conclusion, that's the reason why many marathoners want to run a marathon again. Despite being a painful and exhausting experience during the race, at the end they are rewarded by actually accomplishing it and evaluate that it wasn't that bad after all (although most runners do struggle during the run).
    Maybe this can be applied to pre- and post-incentives too. I mean, if we want respondents to respond our surveys again, maybe post-incentives might work better, because at the end the respondent is happy to receive that reward (even if the survey is very long and cumbersome). But I might be wrong, since I don't remember from the top of my head what are the findings on incentive literature about that...

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