EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.     

"SECRET BALLOTS" AND SELF-REPORTS IN AN EXIT-POLL EXPERIMENT

A controlled exit-poll experiment on Election Day (November3, 1992) shows that refusals to answer questions and other evasiveforms of responding were significantly lower when respondentswere given a self-administered "secret-ballot" questionnairethan when they were interviewed face-to-face. While there weresome suggestive interactions of this mode-of-data collectioneffect with age and sex, and with the partisan atmosphere ofthe precinct in which the interviews were conducted, they wereborderline in significance, inconsistent in pattern, or difficuitto interpret. More important, comparisons with official electionreturns (the truth) indicated that the secret-ballot techniquewas more accurate than were face-to-face interviews in estimatingthe final outcome on the most socially sensitive of three self-reportedvotes: a vote for or against a tax levy for elderly services.Using a genuine secret ballot in the tradition of the olderGallup preelection polls can thus increase the validity of self-reportsin exit polls today.     

Sex Differences in the Characteristics of Members Lost to a Longitudinal Panel: A Speculative Research Note

A nine-year follow-up of former adolescents reveals sex differencesin the relative deviance and drug involvement of individualslost to the panel in young adulthood. As expected, men who werereinterviewed were less deviant than the noninterviewed, whilethe opposite was observed among women. Specification by raceindicates that the female pattern applies especially to nonwhites,but all women who are reinterviewed, irrespective of race, areno less deviant than the nonreinterviewed. The paradoxical findingfor females may result from changing marital status in thatparticular period of the life cycle and an inverse relationshipbetween delinquency and marriage.     

Tocqueville,Beaumont and the Silences in Histories of the United States: An Interdisciplinary Endeavour across Literature and Sociology

Taking the example of the intermittent presence and absence of narratives of slavery, colonialism, and race within standard accounts of the US, we examine how Tocqueville's sociological account of the emergence of democracy in America is transformed when read together with the novel, Marie, written by his friend and travel companion, Beaumont, which addresses issues of American slavery and racism. Our interdisciplinary project proceeds by considering the possible contributions to historical sociology of analysis of literary narratives, and by exploring the translation of social realities into fiction. These interdisciplinary translations, we argue, highlight the specific issue of silences within mainstream narratives about American democracy and enable us to reassess the significance of silences within historiographies of modernity. In particular, the neglect of Beaumont's contribution has given rise to an appropriation of Tocqueville to a largely celebratory account of American democracy and has elided his concern with the lasting consequences of slavery and racism.     

ISSUE INVOLVEMENT AND RESPONSE EFFECTS IN PUBLIC OPINION SURVEYS

This research tests the widespread assumption that responseeffects due to variations in question form, wording, or contextwill be greatest among respondents who are least involved withan issue. A meta-analysis of results from 15 split-ballot experimentsconducted over a five-year period indicates that the responseeffects of using counterarguments or middle alternatives insurvey questions are significantly larger, as would be expected,among respondents who are less involved with a given issue thanamong those who are highly involved with it. But the effectsof question order and response order appear to be largely unrelatedto how involved a respondent is with a particular issue. Issueinvolvement, then, appears to specify some response effects,but not others.     

Effects of Filter Questions in Public Opinion Surveys

Extending previous work, the authors find that the wording ofa filter question can make a significant difference in the percentageof "don't know" (DK) responses elicited by an item, especiallywith topics that are more abstract or less familiar to surveyrespondents. They also find, however, that the content of anitem can have a substantial, independent effect on DK or "noopinion" responses, regardless of how the filter question isworded. In general, it appears that the less familiar the issueor topic, the greater the increase in DK responses producedby adding a filter. Even more important, the analysis showsthat filtering can in some instances dramatically affect theconclusions a pollster would draw about the distribution ofpublic opinion on an issue. Indeed, such effects may occur moreoften than has previously been suspected, though the circumstancesunder which they emerge remain elusive. The authors suggestthat such effects may become amenable to analysis by probingrespondents about "what they had in mind" as they answered thequestion.     

Response-Order Effects and the Early Gallup Split-Ballots

A meta-analysis of split-ballots conducted by the Gallup Organizationin the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s shows that response-ordereffects were generally small in magnitude when averaged acrossa great variety of topics and questions—and as comparedwith many of those reported in the response-effects literaturetoday. When analyzed by various question characteristics, theresults provided some support for predictions derived from currentcognitive models of response-order effects, particularly thosefrom satisficing theory. As predicted, questions asked orallywere more likely to generate a statistically significant patternof recency effects if the response alternatives or the questionsas a whole were longer rather than shorter. Other predictedpatterns of primacy and recency effects failed to materialize,however, perhaps largely because of the inherent design limitationsand partial confounding of question attributes in any such secondaryanalysis of archival survey data, but perhaps, too, becauseof simple chance variations. The data from these early experimentsnonetheless provide a partial, albeit limited, test of rivalhypotheses and explanations of response-order effects in theliterature.     

Effects of Question Wording and Format on Political Attitude Consistency

Numerous studies in the past decade have suggested that theAmerican voter has become increasingly sophisticated, ideologically,and that this is due largely to the separate or combined impactof the growing educational attainments of the U.S. public andthe greater salience of politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Thisstudy, however, hypothesizes that much of the change might bedue to a simple methodological artifact—changes in questionwording and format—and reports data from a recent nationalexperiment which strongly supports such an interpretation. Thegeneralizations derived from The American Voter may, therefore,not be quite as "time-bound" as the current literature wouldlead us to believe.     

Archival sources and the culture history of the Indians of the Eastern Subarctic*

This paper discusses some of the historical materials available to anthropologists interested in research on the Indians of the Eastern Subarctic. Until very recently, several important archival resources were either unknown or ignored by scholars, and therefore many ethnohistorical issues have remained unresolved. In some cases, field data have been extended back in time to fill gaps. But when historical materials are later uncovered, they sometimes refute field-derived historical assumptions. This paper, then, stresses the importance of archival research and illustrates its value with reference to several problem areas in Subarctic ethnology. Of special significance are the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg.