Effects of Question Wording and Format on Political Attitude Consistency

In: Public opinion quarterly: journal of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Band 42, Heft 1, S. 81-92

Abstract

Numerous studies in the past decade have suggested that voters in the US have become increasingly sophisticated, ideologically, & that this is due largely to the separate or combined impact of the growing educational attainments of the US public & the greater salience of politics in the late 1960s & 1970s. Here, it is hypothesized that much of the reported change in constraint--ie, the amount of relationship between issue items--may be due to a simple methodological artifact: changes in question wording & format. Using data from an experiment conducted as part of a national survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center (three random subgroups of approximately 500 cases), the effect of wording & format differences on opinion structuring & amount of "don't know" or "no opinion" responses is examined. According to the findings, wording & format differences can account largely for much of the change observed during this period, & it is suggested that some generalizations about American voters may not be quite as "time-bound" as the current literature would lead one to believe. 2 Tables. AA.