The Effects of Forecasts on the Accuracy and Precision of Expectations.

IF 2.7 1区 社会学 Q1 COMMUNICATION
Public Opinion Quarterly Pub Date : 2025-05-09 eCollection Date: 2025-01-01 DOI:10.1093/poq/nfaf003
Matthew Barnfield, Joseph Phillips, Florian Stoeckel, Benjamin Lyons, Paula Szewach, Jack Thompson, Vittorio Mérola, Sabrina Stöckli, Jason Reifler
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Quantitative forecasts have become increasingly prominent as tools for aiding public understanding of sociopolitical trends. But how much, and what, do people learn from quantitative forecasts? In this note, we show through a preregistered survey experiment that real forecasts of the 2022 French presidential election significantly affect expectations of the election result. The direction of that effect hinges on how the forecast is presented. Voters become more accurate and precise in their predictions of each candidate's vote share when given forecast information in the form of projected vote share. Forecasts presented as numerical probabilities make such expectations less accurate and less precise. When combined, the effects of both forms on vote share expectations tend to cancel out, but jointly boost voters' ability to identify likely winners. Our findings have implications for the public communication of quantitative information.

预测对预期准确性和精度的影响。
定量预测作为帮助公众理解社会政治趋势的工具,已经变得越来越重要。但是,人们从定量预测中学到了多少?学到了什么?在本文中,我们通过预先登记的调查实验表明,对2022年法国总统选举的真实预测会显著影响对选举结果的预期。这种影响的方向取决于预测的呈现方式。当以预计选票份额的形式提供预测信息时,选民对每位候选人的选票份额的预测变得更加准确和精确。以数字概率表示的预测使这种期望不那么准确和不那么精确。当两者结合起来时,这两种形式对选票份额预期的影响往往会相互抵消,但联合起来会提高选民识别可能赢家的能力。我们的研究结果对定量信息的公共传播具有启示意义。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.40
自引率
2.90%
发文量
51
期刊介绍: Published since 1937, Public Opinion Quarterly is among the most frequently cited journals of its kind. Such interdisciplinary leadership benefits academicians and all social science researchers by providing a trusted source for a wide range of high quality research. POQ selectively publishes important theoretical contributions to opinion and communication research, analyses of current public opinion, and investigations of methodological issues involved in survey validity—including questionnaire construction, interviewing and interviewers, sampling strategy, and mode of administration. The theoretical and methodological advances detailed in pages of POQ ensure its importance as a research resource.
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