In September 2018, I provided a workshop on MFSEs at Busogo Campus, University of Rwanda, supported by Dr. Eliud Birachi (International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT, Rwanda), Chantal Ingabire (Rwanda Agriculture Board, RAB), Christine Bigler (Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, ICFG, University of Bern), and Dr. Sabin Bieri (Centre for Development and Environment, CDE, University of Bern).
The participants developed their own experiments.
The participants collected data on one of their own factorial survey experiments which captured marriage norms, i.e. individuals’ agreement/acceptance with a marriage. The design included two attributes: gender and age.
| Attributes | Attribute levels |
| Gender | (1) Man older than woman
(2) Woman older than man (3) Both have the same age |
| Age of marriage | (1) Below 21
(2) Over 21 (3) at age of 21 |
The so-called full factorial – all possible attribute combinations – gives 3 (gender) x 3 (age) = 9 vignettes (versions/situations). Each workshop participant surveyed several respondents resulting in 128 answered vignettes (one vignette per respondent, e.g. “[t]he parents want to wed her son to an older woman. The son is under 21 years old. How much do you disagree or agree with this?”).
After entering and preparing the data, the data was analysed using SPSS, as participants tend to be familiar with this software. The results show that most of the respondents disagree with the marriage as presented in the vignettes. Everything else being equal, compared to a vignette where the described man and woman have the same age, respondents slightly more agree with the marriage if the man is older than the woman. Respondents agree less with the marriage if the woman is older than the man. Compared to a situation where the couple marries at age 21, respondents agree less if the couple marries at an age below 21. Respondents do only make a small difference between a marriage at age 21 and a marriage at an age over 21. There is also an interaction effect indicating that the situation where the marriage is at age below 21 is evaluated more positively if the woman is older than the man. These results show, inter alia, how deviations from law are socially accpeted. This experiment is an example of measuring subjective norms using MFSEs.
Multifactorial Survey Experiments in Development Research 