Judgments of behavioral frequencies: An information processing perspective
Menon, Geeta
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/19665
Description
Title
Judgments of behavioral frequencies: An information processing perspective
Author(s)
Menon, Geeta
Issue Date
1991
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Sudman, Seymour
Department of Study
Business Administration
Discipline
Business Administration
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Business Administration, Marketing
Language
eng
Abstract
In marketing and consumer research, respondents are often asked questions about the frequency with which they engage in various behaviors (e.g., bank loans taken, purchases of durable goods, consumption of snack foods). The information processing demands that such questions placed on the respondent can be tremendous. For some behaviors, it may be easy to recall all specific instances of the target behavior and provide an exact count. For relatively frequent behaviors, however, this recall-and-count method may be difficult or impossible; instead consumers are likely to use heuristics to arrive at a behavioral frequency estimate.
This research examines the process by which frequency judgments are generated for frequent behavior with the goals of (a) contributing to our knowledge of the cognitive processing of autobiographical information (organization and structure in memory, retrieval strategies), and (b) understanding how different questioning strategies may improve the accuracy of such behavioral frequency judgments.
It is hypothesized that the regularity and the similarity of the target behavior determine the way the requisite information is stored in memory and therefore the process by which the judgment is generated. This, in turn, determines the effectiveness of alternative cuing strategies. These hypotheses are tested by obtaining judgments of the frequency of behaviors varying on regularity and similarity. The dependent measures are: (a) verbal protocols, concurrent and retrospective, (b) response time to generate a frequency judgment, and (c) the discrepancy between reported frequency and objective frequency (diary data).
Data indicate that there is support for the model of autobiographical memory for frequent events tested in this research. However, the cuing strategies tested seem to interfere with the natural process of frequency judgment formulation in a way that they do not contribute to improving the accuracy of these reports.
Theoretical implications of the results for autobiographical information processing and questionnaire and survey design are discussed, together with practical implications and proposed extensions for future research.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
