Eliciting Beliefs as Distributions in Online Surveys

Abstract Citizens’ beliefs about uncertain events are fundamental variables in many areas of political science. While often conceptualized the form distributions, obtaining reliable measures terms full probability densities is a difficult task. In this letter, we ask if there an effective way eliciting as distributions context online surveys. Relying on experimental evidence, evaluate performance five different elicitation methods designed to capture citizens’ expectations. Our results suggest that method originally proposed by Manski (2009) performs well. It average subjective belief reliably and easily implemented regular (online) We expect wider use will lead considerable improvements study expectations beliefs.