ARE ANCHORING VIGNETTES RATINGS SENSITIVE TO VIGNETTE AGE AND SEX?
通过近5000名美国老年人的实验数据，检验锚定小短文方法的一个关键假设：小短文描述的虚拟人物健康状况对所有受访者感知相同。结果发现，受访者的评分可能受小短文人物性别和年龄（由名字暗示）的微弱影响，提示该方法的前提可能不成立。
Anchoring vignettes are commonly used to study and correct for differential item functioning and response bias in subjective survey questions. Self-assessed health status is a leading example. A crucial assumption of the vignette methodology is 'vignette equivalence': The health status of the person described in the vignette must be perceived by all respondents in the same way. We use data from a survey experiment conducted with a sample of almost 5000 older Americans to validate this assumption. We find weak evidence that respondents' vignette ratings may be sensitive to the sex and, for older respondents, also to the age (implied by the first name) of the person described in the vignette. Our findings suggest that vignette equivalence may not hold, at least if the potentially subtle connotations of vignette persons' names are not fully controlled.