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4 - Coming to terms with response instability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

John R. Zaller
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Respondents to the 1987 NES pilot study were asked to answer what academic analysts of public opinion will recognize as an entirely standard question:

Some people think the government in Washington should cut government services, even in areas such as education and health care, in order to reduce the deficit. Others think government services should be increased.

In an unusual twist, however, respondents to this survey were not permitted to give an immediate answer to the question. Instead, the interviewer continued:

Before telling me how you feel about this, could you tell me what kinds of things come to mind when you think about cutting government services? (Any others?)

The interviewer wrote down respondents' remarks verbatim, and then asked:

Now, what comes to mind when you think about increases in government services? (Any others?)

At this point, the original question was repeated and the respondents were, at last, permitted to render a simple dichotomous judgment on the matter of government services. But in the meantime, each individual had revealed what the issue of government services meant to him or her at the moment of answering a standard closed-ended question about it. Because every respondent was asked the same questions again four weeks later, these probes make it possible to see how their thinking on the issue might have changed over time. The openended comments elicited by these probes constitute some of the best evidence currently available on what citizens' survey responses mean and why they are so beset by vagaries.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

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