/reducetarian-messaging-study

Code and data for messaging experiment examining the effects of "reduce" and "eliminate" messages on meat consumption

Primary LanguageR

README

This repository contains the code and data for replicating the results of a messaging experiment conducted by the Animal Welfare Action Lab (AWAL) with the support of the Reducetarian Foundation.

The working paper, pre-registration, and surveys for this study are available at: https://osf.io/44z7j/.

We welcome contributions to the existing set of analyses (see TODO.md for a list of analyses that have not been completed yet). If you wish to contribute, follow the instructions here to fork the repository, make changes, and submit a pull request.

Citation:

Macdonald, BNJ, KD Caldwell, and GD Boese. 2016. The effects of "reduce" and "eliminate" appeals on individual meat consumption. Unpublished manuscript. Available at: https://osf.io/nxrx3/.

Replicating the analyses

  1. Download the entire repository.
  2. To replicate the data cleaning (i.e. converting raw data files in raw-data-shareable into clean data files in cleaned-data-shreable), open a command line session and run: $ bash clean.sh
  3. To replicate the data analysis, open a new command line session and run: $ bash analysis.sh

This will run the R scripts in order and reproduce the main results contained in the results, tables, and figures directories.

Main R Scripts

  • 01-wave1-cleaning.R cleans the wave 1 Qualtrics data and saves it as a csv file.
  • 02-blocking.R was used for block randomized assignment to treatment.
  • 03-wave2-cleaning.R cleans the wave 2 Qualtrics data and saves it to a csv file.
  • 04-wave3-cleaning.R cleans the wave 3 Qualtrics data and saves it to a csv file.
  • 05-merging-all-waves.R merges the data from waves 1, 2, and 3 together and does some additional cleaning.
  • 06-main-analysis.R contains the analyses for producing the main treatment effects.
  • 07-subgroup-analyses.R contains sub-group analyses examining how the treatment effects vary across groups in the study sample.
  • 08-alternative-analyses.R contains analyses for examining treatment effects on other outcomes of interest.

Data

  • cleaned-data-shareable/all_waves_cleaned.csv contains the cleaned data output by 05-merging-all-waves.R that is used to produce the main results.
  • raw-data-shareable/ contains the raw unprocessed data.
  • see other-scripts/variables.r for a description of variables in the cleaned data files. See var-dicts/ for the interpretation of variable names in the raw data files.
  • all MTurk IDs have been replaced with hashed IDs to ensure anonymity.

Other folders

  • var-dicts/ contains variable dictionaries for the raw data files.
  • functions/ contains functions that are called in the main R scripts.
  • other-scripts/ contains additional R scripts that are called in the main R scripts.