Validity Without Ground Truth: What Stated-Preference Economics Offers the Evaluation of Language Models
Many of the questions now put to large language models have no correct answer to score against: what a policy is worth, which option a user should choose, how to weigh competing values. Stated-preference economics has faced this problem for decades. It judges survey responses without knowing the true value, through a framework of validity and related concepts: content, construct, and criterion validity, reliability, incentive compatibility, and consequentiality. We argue that this framework is a general method for evaluating language models, and we set out what each concept means for LLM evaluation. We demonstrate the approach using a published water-quality stated preference economic val...
| Authors | Daniel Robert Kling Alexander, Catherine Louise Kling |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 7 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 7 October 2026 |
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