The Impact of "No Opinion" Response Options on Data Quality: Non-Attitude Reduction or an Invitation to Satisfice?

According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinionoption should reduce the pressure to give substantive responsesfelt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast,the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinionoptions may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitivework necessary to report the true opinions they do have. Weaddress these arguments using data from nine experiments carriedout in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion optionswas found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitiveskills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondentsanswering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked laterin a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effortto the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained(as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness toa question manipulation) was not compromised by the omissionof no-opinion options. These results suggest that inclusionof no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance dataquality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningfulopinions.     

'She Has Different Fits to Me': how people with learning difficulties see themselves

People with learning difficulties often appear to experience significant incongruence between their categorical identity as someone with learning difficulties and their self-identity. This paper draws on research undertaken with 60 young adults, and their parents or carers to examine the nature of that incongruence. We conclude that it is based almost entirely in discursive relationships, whereas experiential and power relationships promote incorporation of categorical identity into self-identity. We call for more careful consideration and open discussion of the ways in which the categorical identity of people with learning difficulties is handled in discursive relations with them.     

PRIVATE MATERIALISM, PERSONAL SELF-FULFILLMENT, FAMILY LIFE, AND PUBLIC INTEREST THE NATURE, EFFECTS, AND CAUSES OF RECENT CHANGES IN THE VALUES OF AMERICAN YOUTH

From the early seventies through 1986–87, private materialismas a life goal increased greatly in importance among Americanyouth, goals relating to family life increased somewhat, publicinterest concerns diminished modestly, and the goal of personalself-fulfillment declined sharply. Accompanying this shift invalues was a change in young people's college majors and careerplans toward those leading to higher paying jobs and a markedincrease in the attractiveness of working in large corporations.Jobs offering money and status became more preferred relativeto those with opportunities for self-fulfillment or public service.Support grew for capitalist institutions such as profit makingand advertising. At the same time, there was a retreat frompolitical involvement, and a conservative shift in politicalbeliefs. Explanations of the shift in values in terms of theimpact on the young of major political and social events orthe emergence of a feeling of economic insecurity among theyoung are not supported by the evidence. Nor are a number ofhypotheses relating to changes in young people's family structureor social ization experience. The shift in values of the youngdoes, how ever, apparently correspond to a similar change inthe values of adults generally and, thus, may reflect changesin the values transmitted to young people as they were growingup. We specu late that the shift in values among adults was,in turn, caused by a growing feeling of economic deprivationin the post-1973 period as real wage rates declined and materialaspirations continued to rise. In the last few years, the shiftin the life goals of the young appears to have ended and mayeven have started to reverse, but young people today are stillmuch different from those 15 years ago.     

POVERTY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: TRICKLE DOWN PETERS OUT

Previous studies have found that economic growth tends to "trickle down" to poor families. This study investigates whether use of a relative definition of poverty eliminates the impact of economic growth on the incidence of poverty of various demographic groups and whether a decrease in the impact of growth has occurred since 1964. With the exception of families with male heads, economic growth no longer affects poverty irrespective of whether a relative or absolute definition of poverty is used. Our findings indicate that the contribution of growth has been overstated, that much of the past success has been illusory, and that poverty will be more intractable in the future.     

Preelection Polling in the 1982 Illinois Gubernatorial Contest

All the polls in advance of the 1982 Illinois gubernatorialelection proved incorrect in their prediction of a substantialvictory for James Thompson, the Republican. After examiningsome of the popular explanations for the "missed call," thispaper shows that while the voters "preferred" Thompson, therewas a very substantial increase in the number of straight partyballots cast for the Democrats, compared to 1978. This paperconcludes that in those states where straight party vote isan option, the poll takers probe for the possibility of a partyline vote. Information used in this paper to examine five hypothesesstems from a preelection poll of 1,200 Illinois voters.     

Polls in the Media: Content, Credibility, and Consequences

Polls appearing in the New York Times and on the CBS and NBCevening news programs for three years are categorized, theirtreatment by the media dissected, and their possible politicalimplications analyzed.     

Ethnic Networks and Tolerant Attitudes

This study describes an empirical association between the ethnichomogeneity or heterogeneity of an individual's network of primaryrelations and his or her attitudes toward free speech and childrearing. It argues, following Gordon (1964), that the differencein attitudes between those in homogeneous networks and thosein heterogeneous ones reflects a process of acculturation parallelingsocial assimilation. The basic finding has important consequencesfor any assessment of the present state of ethnicity in Americansociety and raises serious doubts about recent claims of persistingethnic cultural diversity among Americans of European ancestry. Richard D. Alba is Assistant Professor of Sociology, CornellUniversity. An earlier version of this study was read at the1977 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in New York.The work reported here was supported by a Russell Sage GraduateStudent Fellowship to the author and an NIMH grant, number 1R01 MH23806-01 SSR to Donald Treiman at the Center for PolicyResearch. The author is grateful to Andrew Greeley for permissionto use the Catholic Americans data and to Patrick Bova for providingthem, to Harold Abramson for his encouraging comments on earlydrafts, and to Allen Barton, Steven Cohen, Jonathan Cole, JohnHammond, Charles Kadushin, Robert Merton, and Donald Treiman