Using a Rule Developing Experimentation Approach to Study Social Problems

Abstract

This article presents the first in a series of studies on the corruption of various types, assessed through an online experiment known as mind genomics. The data allows for the creation of simple models from regression, showing the part-worth contribution of every element to perceived corruption, and to perceived positive, neutral or negative emotion. The authors use ordinary least squares regression models and advanced data mining techniques to analyze the data and classify the users accordingly. They present the results from four countries (Albania, Hungary, India, and the USA), looking at the linkages between corruption by country, and by other factors such as social class. Based on the collected data a model is generated for each group (country, type of person), showing how the person in the group is likely to call a description ‘corrupt,' and how each particular element from the set of 20 elements related to education adds or subtracts to that basic proclivity to call a situation or behavior corrupt.