A tutorial on the use of Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 for conducting delay-discounting analyses

J Appl Behav Anal. 2012 Summer;45(2):375-86. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2012.45-375.

Abstract

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic discounting model and area under the curve. This tutorial is intended to encourage the quantitative analysis of behavior in both research and applied settings by readers with relatively little formal training in nonlinear regression.

Keywords: Microsoft Excel; behavioral economics; delay discounting; impulsivity; technology.

MeSH terms

  • Area Under Curve
  • Choice Behavior
  • Humans
  • Impulsive Behavior* / psychology
  • Regression Analysis
  • Reward
  • Software* / classification
  • User-Computer Interface*