Understanding Economics

This is a webapp developed for Professor Stefanie Stantcheva's research on teaching people economics and seeing how well people understand economic policies.

Fields Schema

This details how the fields.json file organizes the surveys, topics, and questions. At the bottom is a JSON file schema that can be copied, pasted, and filled in with ease.

Data Types

All

Some fields are common to all of the datatype.

id

The id field should be a string mapping to the question id in the data. This should match the key of the object in the questions dictionary. This will not be seen by the user and must be case-sensitve.

title

The title is a string will be displayed to the user to select from. It should be relatively short (less than 20 characters).

description

The description is a string that is displayed to the user and represents a longer explanation of the question. Typically this is the question text.

type

The type of the question is a string that represents what type of question it is. It should be in all caps, and should be one of the following:

• CATEGORICAL
• NUMERIC
• TREATMENT
• UMBRELLA
• WORDCLOUD
• KEYNESS

sorter

The sorter is a list of strings with the the possible options in the order in which they should be displayed. Each option must be exactly the same (case-sensitive, no additional spaces), as the options in the data.

Categorical

The categorical dataype is used for any data that has a limited number of options (3-5 options typically). This includes questions that have different "levels" of responses.

color

The color can be either a list or a string representing the colors of the categories for the options. If it is a list, it should be a list of strings with color hex codes. If it is a string, it will be a key lookup mapping to a color in the Colors.js file.

Numeric

These questions should have a "continuous" response, and have more possible responses than the categorical variables do. These are responses that would be best displayed in a histogram of some kind.

correct

This is a number representing the correct answer to the question.

source

This is a string denoting the source of the correct answer. If this is filled, the correct answer field must also be filled.

format

This is a string to tell the format of the numbers. The formats are typically percent or dollar, and all the formats are listed in NumerFormats.js.

Treatment

Treatment questions are categorical questions but where the question is asked in different ways based on the group. As a json object, the treatment question should be the overarching question, and there should be subquestions (in the questions) field, each of which is a categorical question and that specifies which treamtent(s) were received.

questions

Each treatment must have a questions field that is a list of other categorical question objects. Each must have an id which maps to the question, as well as a title and a description. The title is typically the name of the treatment. The sorter and the colors fields are propogated from the parent question, and are not needed in each subquestion.

treatments

Within each subquestion of the treatments, there should be a list of strings that represent the treatments that are applied to that question. Typically, this is either ["Neutral], ["You"], or ["Gender].

Umbrella

These are questions that have subquestions that are closely related. The subquestions can be of any type, and umbrella questions are usually of the form "To what extent do you agree with each of the following...".

questions

This is a list of questions that are underneath the umbrella question. Each object in this list should be a full blown question object.

Wordcloud and Keyness

These are visualizations for handling free response questions. Right now, each of these should just display the description and a linked image. Notably, these do not have groups associated as they are aggregates.

img_url

This should be a string with the full file name of the image that should be presented. These are relative to the public folder.

Outline

{
    "groups" : {
        GROUP_ID : {
            "id" : GROUP_ID,
            "title" : GROUP_TITLE,
            "description" : "GROUP_DESCRIPTION",
            "type" : "CATEGORICAL",
            "sorter" " [GROUP_1, GROUP_2, GROUP_3] -- All answers must be listed exactly, case-sensitive
        }
    },
    "surveys" : {
        SURVEY_ID : {
            "title" : SURVEY_TITLE,
            "topics" : {
                TOPIC_ID : {
                    "id" : TOPIC_ID,
                    "title" : TOPIC_TITLE,
                    "description" : TOPIC_DESCRIPTION,
                    "questions" : {
                        QUESTION_ID : {
                            "id" : QUESTION_ID,
                            "title" : QUESTION_TITLE,
                            "description" : QUESTION_DESCRIPTION,
                            "type" : "CATEGORICAL" | "NUMERICAL" | "TREATMENT" | "WORDCLOUD" | "KEYNESS" | "MULTICHOICE",
                            "sorter" : [ANSWER_1, ANSWER_2, ANSWER_3],
                            "colors" : "SEE Colors.js" | [COLOR_1, COLOR_2, COLOR_3],
                            "correct" : CORRECT_ANSWER (OPTIONAL),
                            "source" : ANSWER_SOURCE (ONLY IF CORRECT_ANSWER),
                            "format" : "percent" | "dollar"
                            "questions" (TREATMENT ONLY) : [
                                {
                                    "id" : SUBQUESTION_ID,
                                    "title" : "CONTROL" | "YOU" | "GENDER",
                                    "description" : SUBQUESTION_DESCRIPTION,
                                    "treatments" : ["Neutral" | "You" | "Gender", ]

                                }
                            ]    
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}