MEASURING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR THE NEW CHRISTIAN RIGHT: THE PERILS OF POINT ESTIMATION

It has been reported that 30% of American adults support the"sociomoral platform of the Moral Majority" (Simpson, 1983).We lodge several criticisms of this estimate and/or the wayit has subsequently been interpreted, involving the treatmentof "don't know" responses, the selection of response categorycutting points, the passage of time, the effects of questionwording, and substance. We derive a much different estimateof public support for the Moral Majority platform in the sameyear, but our more basic conclusion is simply that public opinionon this issue, as on most complex issues, cannot be fairly reflectedby a single number.     

The Measurement of a Middle Position in Attitude Surveys

Five split-ballot experiments, plus replications, were carriedout in several national surveys to compare the effects of offeringor omitting a middle alternative in forced-choice attitude questions.Explicitly offering a middle position significantly increasesthe size of that category, but tends not to otherwise affectunivariate distributions. The relation of intensity to the middleposition is somewhat greater on Offered forms than on Omittedforms (less intense respondents being more affected by questionform than those who feel more strongly), but in general formdoes not alter the relationship between an item and a numberof other respondent characteristics. Finally, in one instancethere is evidence that form can change the conclusion aboutwhether two attitude items are related, but the results areof uncertain reliability.     

Attitude Measurement and the Gun Control Paradox

The discrepancy between public support for gun registrationas measured in national surveys and legislative inaction onthesame issue leads to questions about the adequacy of traditionalpoll measures of public opinion. Hypotheses about three kindsof shortcomings are tested: (1) gun registration sentiment tendsto vary appreciably with question wording, and therefore isless crystallized than survey data suggest; (2) anti-gun registrationopinions are held with greater intensitythan are pro-gun registrationopinions, and therefore have different consequences for politicalaction; (3) opposition to gun registration is located particularlyamong those with greater political knowledge and influence,and thus has a disproportionate impact on legislators. Althoughthere is some evidence in support of the first two hypotheses,it does not appear sufficient to explain the discrepancy. However,the study produces a valuable finding about the use of intensitymeasures in attitude surveys, particularly the importance ofdesigning such measures for maximum sensitivity to nonlinearrelations     

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.     

CAN CHANGES IN CONTEXT REDUCE VOTE OVERPORTING IN SURVEYS?

This paper reports the results of two split-sample experimentsdesinged to examine whether question context can reduce voteoverreporting in surveys. The first experiment tests the effectsof preceding the turnout item with a question about the locationof the polling place. If respondents who overreport do notknow where their polling place is, they should be less apt toreport incorrectly about turnout after being asked the locationof the poll. The second experiment tests the effects of precedingthe vote item with a question about lifetime electoral behaviour.If inaccurancy is dueto respondent's wanting to present themselvesin a favourable light, the oppurtunity to report past or usualgood citizenship should reduce the pressure to claim participationin the last election.     

LITTLE WHITE LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MODELS CORRELATED RESPONSE ERRORS IN A PANEL STUDY OF VOTING

One interpretation for the common survey finding that the backgroundcharacteristics of vote overreporters resemble those of actualvoters is that misreporters usually vote. This hypothesis—thatmisreporters regularly voted in earlier elections—is testedwith data from the 1972–74–76 Michigan ElectionPanel. It receives no support: the 1972 and 1974 validated turnoutof the 1976 misreporters was very low. Moreover, misreportingwas a fairly stable respondent characteristic: misreportingabout an election in one interview was correlated with misreportingabout the remaining elections in each of the other two interviews.A comparison of regressions predicting turnout using the validatedreports versus the self-reports shows that the respondent errorscan distort conclusions about the correlates of voting. Forexample, controlling for three other variables, education wasrelated to self-reported voting but not to validated voting.Here, as well as in surveys of other socially desirable or undesirableissues, respondent self-reports may bias survey data in favorof commonsense models of the world.     

Context Effects on Survey Responses to Questions About Abortion

The proportion of favorable responses to a general questionabout abortion was significantly smaller in an NORC survey thanwere responses to the same item in an SRC survey. We hypothesizedthat questionnaire context was the main source of the difference–inone survey the general item followed a more specific questionabout abortion–and carried out two split-ballot questionorder experiments that provide strong support for the hypothesis.The context effect seems to arise from the generality of theabortion question; the specific question itself showed no changedue to context. Furthermore, there is some evidence that ambivalencetoward the issue of abortion is a factor in the sensitivityof the general question to context. The context effect in theseexperiments is also notable for producing contrast rather thanconsistency between responses to adjacent questions on the sameissue. Implications of the findings for the study of socialchange are emphasized.