Replication Data for: Social Preferences: Measuring Private, Public and Group Preferences through Focus Groups

How does the social nature of focus groups shape what researchers learn about preferences? This paper delineates three preference types - private, publicly expressed and group preferences - and introduces a new method for measuring each in a focus group setting. Original data on people’s preferences for punishing rape, wife-beating, and theft across 80 focus groups in 20 villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo reveal clear differences across preference types, featuring more extreme punishment preferences in the public sphere. A within-subject experiment also shows that focus group discussions themselves affect people’s private preferences by making them more extreme, which has ethical implications for researchers that use focus groups worldwide. The social nature of preferences observed in Democratic Republic of Congo underscores that scholars must adopt clear and transparent approaches to data comparison to learn about sensitive issues in the face of contested norms.

焦点小组（Focus Group）的社会属性如何影响研究者对个体偏好的认知？本文界定了私人偏好、公开表达偏好与群体偏好三类偏好，并提出了一种可在焦点小组场景下分别测量这三类偏好的全新方法。针对刚果民主共和国（Democratic Republic of the Congo）东部20个村庄的80个焦点小组所采集的、关于民众对强奸、殴打妻子以及盗窃行为的惩罚偏好的原始数据显示，不同类型的偏好存在显著差异，公共领域中的惩罚偏好更为极端。一项被试内实验（Within-subject Experiment）进一步表明，焦点小组讨论本身会通过强化个体态度的极端性来改变人们的私人偏好，这一发现对全球范围内使用焦点小组的研究者均具有伦理层面的启示意义。本次在刚果民主共和国观测到的偏好的社会属性凸显出：当面对存在争议的社会规范时，学者必须采用清晰且透明的数据对比方法，才能对敏感议题形成可靠的学术认知。