34
The Psychology of Survey
Response
Since the beginning of public opinion surveys,
researchers have been aware that minor
changes in question wording, format, or order
can profoundly affect respondents’ answers
(Cantril, 1944; Payne, 1951). Nevertheless,
the field has long been characterized by two
largely separate streams: rigorous theories of
sampling on the one hand, and an experience
based ‘art of asking questions’ on the other
hand. This changed since the early 1980s,
thanks to a collaboration of survey method-
ologists and cognitive psychologists, who
brought theories of language comprehension,
memory, and judgment to bear on the response
process (for reviews see Sudman, Bradburn, &
Schwarz, 1996; Schwarz, 1999; Tourangeau,
Rips, & Rasinski, 2000; and the contributions
in Sirken et al., 1999). This chapter highlights
key lessons learned, with particular attention
to the cognitive and communicative processes
underlying answers to attitude questions. For
a complementary review of the processes
underlying behavioral reports, see Schwarz
and Oyserman (2001).
Answering a survey question entails several
distinct tasks (Cannell, Marquis, & Laurent,
Norbert Schwarz
1977; Tourangeau, 1984; Strack & Martin,
1987). Respondents’ first need is to under-
stand the question posed to determine what
information they are asked to provide. If the
question is an attitude question, they may
either retrieve a previously formed judgment
from memory or form a judgment on the spot.
Because a previously formed judgment that
fits the specifics of the question asked is rarely
accessible, judgment formation during the
interview setting is the most common case. To
form a judgment, respondents need to retrieve
relevant information from memory. Usually,
they will also need to retrieve or construct
some standard against which the attitude
object is evaluated. Once a ‘private’ judgment
is formed in respondents’ minds, they have to
communicate it to the researcher. Unless the
question is asked in an open response format,
they need to format their judgment to fit
the response alternatives. Finally, respondents
may wish to edit their response before they
communicate it, due to self-presentation and
social desirability concerns.
The following sections review these tasks
in more detail. Throughout, the emphasis is
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE
on the theoretical conceptualization of the
underlying processes, with illustrations from
selected experimental results.
QUESTION COMPREHENSION
Survey textbooks rightly emphasize that
researchers should avoid unfamiliar terms and
complex syntax in writing survey questions
(see Bradburn, Sudman, & Wansink, 2004,
for advice; and Belson, 1981, for common
problems). This focus on the literal or
semantic meaning of the question, however,
misses an important point: Language compre-
hension is not about words per se, but about
speaker meaning (Clark & Schober, 1992).
When asked, ‘What have you done today?’
respondents surely understand the words. But
to provide an answer, they need to determine
what kind of activities the researcher is
interested in—should they report that they
had a cup of coffee or took a shower, or is
that not what the researcher had in mind?
Providing an informative answer requires
extensive inferences about the questioner’s
likely intention to determine the pragmatic
meaning of the question.
To draw these inferences, respondents rely
on the tacit assumptions of conversational
conduct described by Paul Grice (1975), a
philosopher of language. According to Grice’s
analysis, conversations proceed according to
a co-operativeness principle, which can be
expressed in the form of four maxims. First,
a maxim of relation enjoins speakers to
make their contribution relevant to the aims
of the ongoing conversation. This maxim
licenses the use of contextual information
in question interpretation and invites respon-
dents to relate the question to the context
of the ongoing exchange. Second, a maxim
of quantity requests speakers to make their
contribution as informative as is required,
but not more informative than is required.
It invites respondents to provide information
the questioner seems interested in, rather than
other information that may come to mind.
Moreover, it discourages the reiteration of
information provided earlier, or that ‘goes
375
without saying’ (such as, ‘taking a shower’
in the above example). Third, a maxim of
manner holds that the contribution should
be clear rather than obscure, ambiguous or
wordy. This maxim entails an interpretabil-
ity presumption: research participants can
assume that the researcher ‘chose his wording
so they can understand what he meant—and
can do so quickly’ (Clark & Schober, 1992,
p. 27). Hence, the most obvious meaning
seems likely to be the correct one; if an
obvious meaning is not apparent, respon-
dents may consult the immediate context to
determine one. The researcher’s contributions
to the conversation include formal aspects
of questionnaire design, like the response
alternatives, and respondents draw on these
features in interpreting the question. Finally,
a maxim of quality enjoins speakers not
to say anything they believe to be false
or lack adequate evidence for. These rules
of cooperative conversational conduct are
essential for understanding how respondents
make sense of the questions asked of them (for
reviews see Clark & Schober, 1992; Schwarz,
1996).
Question context
In natural conversations, we draw on the con-
tent of the ongoing conversation to interpret
the next utterance, as licensed by the maxim
of relation. The same holds for survey inter-
views, where respondents draw on the content
of preceding questions. Hence, a question
about ‘drugs’ acquires a different meaning in
the context of health questions rather than
crime questions. As a particularly informa-
tive example, consider research in which
respondents are asked to report their opinion
about a highly obscure, or even completely
fictitious, issue, such as the ‘Agricultural
Trade Act of 1978’ (e.g., Schuman & Presser,
1981; Bishop, Oldendick, & Tuchfarber,
1986). Apparently confirming public opin-
ion researchers’ nightmares, about 30% of
respondents report an opinion on such topics,
presumably in the absence of any knowledge.
Yet, their answers may be more meaningful
than assumed.
376 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
From a conversational point of view, the
sheer fact that a question about some issue
is asked presupposes that it exists—or else
asking the question would violate every norm
of conversational conduct. Respondents have
no reason to believe that the researcher
would ask a meaningless question and hence
draw on contextual information to make
sense of it. Once they have assigned a
particular meaning to the issue, they have no
difficulty reporting a subjectively meaningful
opinion. Supporting this assumption, Strack,
Schwarz, and Wänke (1991) observed that
German university students reported different
attitudes toward the introduction of a fictitious
‘educational contribution,’ depending on the
content of a preceding question. Some
students were asked to estimate the average
tuition fees that students have to pay at
US universities (in contrast to Germany,
where university education is free), whereas
others had to estimate the amount of money
that the Swedish government pays every
student as financial support. As expected,
respondents inferred that the fictitious ‘edu-
cational contribution’ pertained to students
having to pay money when it followed the
tuition question, but to students receiving
money when it followed the financial support
question. Accordingly, they reported a more
favorable attitude toward the introduction of
an ‘educational contribution’ in the former
than in the latter case—hardly a meaningless
response.
While the maxim of relation licenses the
use of preceding questions in interpreting
subsequent ones, the maxim of quantity
encourages respondents not to reiterate infor-
mation they have already provided earlier.
This results in unique meaning shifts when
closely related questions with overlapping
meaning are presented. In daily life, one
may give the exact same answer when a
friend asks how happy one is with life
and another asks how satisfied one is—
after all, these are closely related concepts
and one’s friends may just use different
words. But if the same friend asks first
how happy one is and then follows up
with how satisfied one is, he/she may have
different concepts in mind, requiring different
and non-redundant answers. Again, the same
holds for survey interviews. Strack et al.
(1991) asked respondents to report on their
general happiness and satisfaction with life.
When these questions were presented as the
last and first questions of two separate ques-
tionnaires, presented by different researchers,
the two questions correlated, with r = 0.96.
But when both questions were presented as the
last two questions of the first questionnaire,
respondents differentiated between happiness
and satisfaction, resulting in different mean
reports and a significantly lower correlation
of r = 0.75. Hence, closely related questions
can elicit a differential interpretation when
presented in close proximity, reflecting that
we don’t assume that people ask the same
thing twice. This can attenuate the internal
consistency of multi-item scales.
In natural conversations, we further draw
on our knowledge about the speaker to
infer the intended meaning of a question.
Again, the same applies to research situations,
where the researcher’s affiliation may provide
important clues. Norenzayan and Schwarz
(1999) presented respondents with newspaper
accounts of mass murders and asked them
to explain why the mass murder occurred.
Depending on conditions, the questionnaire
was printed on the letterhead of an alleged
‘Institute for Personality Research’ or ‘Insti-
tute for Social Research.’As expected, respon-
dents’ explanations showed more attention to
personality variables or to social-contextual
variables, depending on whether they thought
the researcher was a personality psychologist
or a social scientist. As requested by norms
of conversational conduct, respondents took
the researcher’s affiliation into account to
determine which information would be most
relevant to the questioner’s likely epistemic
interest.
In sum, respondents make systematic use
of contextual information. In face-to-face
and telephone interviews, this information is
limited to what has been provided earlier in
the interview. In self-administered surveys,
however, respondents can read ahead and can
peruse subsequent questions in an effort to
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE
make sense of preceding ones, giving rise
to systematic influences of later questions
on earlier ones (e.g., Schwarz & Hippler,
1995).
Response alternatives
Particularly relevant sources of contextual
information are the response alternatives
that accompany a question. This has been
most extensively addressed in comparisons of
open and closed response formats. Suppose
respondents are asked in an open format,
‘What have you done today?’ To give a
meaningful answer, they have to determine
which activities may be of interest to the
researcher. Observing the maxim of quan-
tity, they are likely to omit activities that
the researcher is obviously aware of (e.g.,
‘I gave a survey interview’) or may take for
granted anyway (e.g., ‘I took a shower’). If
respondents were given a list of activities
that included giving an interview and taking
a shower, most respondents would endorse
them. At the same time, such a list would
reduce the likelihood that respondents report
activities that are not represented on the list
(see Schuman & Presser, 1981; Schwarz &
Hippler, 1991, for reviews). Both of these
questions form effects reflect that response
alternatives can clarify the intended meaning
of a question and may remind respondents
of material that they may otherwise not
consider.
These processes can result in pronounced
and systematic differences between open
and closed question formats. For example,
Schuman and Presser (1981, pp. 105ff.) asked
respondents what they consider ‘the most
important thing for children to prepare them
for life.’ Whereas 62% picked ‘To think for
themselves’ when this alternative was offered
as part of a list, only 5% provided an answer
that could be assigned to this category in an
open response format.
Response alternatives can even affect
question interpretation when they are purely
‘formal’ in nature and apparently devoid of
any substantive information. As an exam-
ple, suppose respondents are asked, ‘How
377
successful would you say you have been
in life?’ accompanied by a rating scale
that ranges from ‘not at all successful’
to ‘extremely successful.’ To answer this
question, they have to determine what the
researcher means by ‘not at all successful’—
does this term refer to the absence of
outstanding achievements or to the presence
of explicit failures? To do so, they may draw
on a feature that the researcher is unlikely
to consider informative, namely the numeric
values of the rating scale. Schwarz, Knäuper,
Hippler, Noelle-Neumann, and Clark (1991)
presented the above success-in-life question
with an 11-point rating scale that ranged
either from 0 (‘not at all successful’) to
10 (‘extremely successful’), or from −5
(‘not at all successful’) to +5 (‘extremely
successful’). Whereas 34% of the respondents
endorsed a value between 0 and 5 on the
0 to 10 scale, only 13% endorsed one of
the formally equivalent values between −5
and 0 on the −5 to +5 scale. Figure 34.1
shows the response shift underlying these
differences.
Subsequent experiments indicated that this
shift is due to differential interpretations
of ‘not at all successful.’ When combined
with the numeric value ‘0,’ respondents
inferred that the term refers to the absence
of outstanding achievements. However, when
the same term was combined with the numeric
value ‘−5,’ and the scale offered ‘0’ as the
mid-point, they inferred that it refers to the
presence of explicit failures. In general, a
format that ranges from negative to positive
numbers conveys that the researcher has
a bipolar dimension in mind, where the
two poles refer to the presence of opposite
attributes. In contrast, a format that uses
only positive numbers conveys that the
researcher has a unipolar dimension in mind,
referring to different degrees of the same
attribute.
Other ‘formal’ characteristics of response
scales, like the graphical layout of rat-
ing scales or the numeric values of frequency
scales, can have a similarly profound impact
on respondents’ question interpretation (for a
review see Schwarz, 1996, chap. 5). While the
378 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
0; −5 1; −4 2; −3 3; −2 4; −1 5; 0 6; +1 7; +2 8; +3 9; +4 10; +5

0 to 10 Scale −5 to +5 Scale

Figure 34.1 Response distribution as a function of the numerical values of the

rating scale
Note: Shown is the percentage of respondents who chose the respective scale value when asked,
‘How successful would you say you have been in life?’ 0 or −5 = ‘not at all successful’; 10 or
+5 = ‘extremely successful.’ Adapted from Schwarz, Knäuper, Hippler, Noelle-Neumann, &
Clark (1991)

researcher’s selection of these formats is often
based on convenience or in-house traditions,
respondents assume that every contribution
of the researcher is relevant to their task,
consistent with the maxim of relation. They
therefore draw on formal characteristics of the
research instrument in making sense of the
question asked.
Moreover, respondents work within the
constraints imposed by the question format
(Schuman & Presser, 1981). This is partic-
ularly apparent with regard to ‘don’t know’
(DK) or ‘no opinion’ responses. Standard
survey questions usually omit ‘no opinion’
as an explicit option, but interviewers accept
this response when volunteered. Experimental
studies (e.g., Schuman & Presser, 1981)
have consistently found that respondents
are more likely to report not having an
opinion when a DK option is explicitly
offered (see Schwarz & Hippler, 1991, for a
review). Similarly, many respondents prefer
a middle alternative between two extreme
positions when offered, but endorse another
option when the middle alternative is omitted
(e.g., Schuman & Presser, 1981). Thus, most
respondents assume that the rules of the
game call for working within the categories
offered, even though a desire to answer
otherwise is evident when more choice is
provided.
Cognitive pretests
As these findings indicate, question com-
prehension is not about words—it is about
speaker meaning. To determine the speaker’s
intended meaning, respondents pay close
attention to contextual information, bringing
the tacit assumptions that govern conver-
sations in daily life (Grice, 1975) to the
research situation (Schwarz, 1996). That
their responses are systematically affected
by minor features of the research instru-
ment highlights how closely they attend
to the specifics at hand in their quest to
provide informative answers. Unfortunately,
their efforts are rarely appreciated by the
researcher, who considers these features
substantively irrelevant and treats their influ-
ence as an undesirable artifact. Nor are
researchers likely to note these influences
in regular surveys, where control conditions
with different question formats are missing,
or in regular field pretests, where problems
can only be identified when respondents give
obviously meaningless answers or complain
about the questions asked. What is needed
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE
are pretest procedures that deliberately probe
respondents’ understanding of a question in
the context and format in which it will be
presented in the actual interview.
Several such cognitive interviewing pro-
cedures have been developed (see Sudman
et al., 1996, chap. 2, and the contributions
in Schwarz & Sudman, 1996). Most widely
used are verbal protocols, in the form of
concurrent or retrospective think-aloud proce-
dures. In addition, respondents are often asked
to paraphrase the question, thus providing
insight into their interpretation of question
meaning (see DeMaio & Rothgeb, 1996, for
common methods). An alternative, but less
sensitive, approach involves detailed analyses
of field pretests, known as behavior coding
(see Fowler & Cannell, 1996). Based on
insights from cognitive interviews, Lessler
and Forsyth (1996) developed a detailed
coding scheme that allows researchers to
identify likely question problems in advance.
Cognitive pretests that illuminate respon-
dents’ understanding of a question within its
intended context can be conducted with a
relatively small number of respondents, and
provide the best available safeguard against
later surprises.
RECALLING INFORMATION AND
FORMING A JUDGMENT
Once respondents have determined what the
researcher is interested in, they need to recall
relevant information from memory. In some
cases, respondents may have direct access
to a recently formed relevant judgment that
they can offer as an answer. In most cases,
however, they will not find an appropriate
answer readily stored in memory, and will
need to form a judgment on the spot, drawing
on whatever information comes to mind at that
time. What renders this process problematic
for public opinion research is its high context
dependency: what information comes to mind,
and how it is used, is strongly influenced by
the specifics of the research instrument.
As a general rule, people never retrieve all
information that may potentially be relevant to
379
a judgment. Instead, they truncate the search
process as soon as enough information has
come to mind to form the judgment with
sufficient subjective certainty. Accordingly,
the judgment is disproportionately influenced
by the information that is most accessible at
that point in time, e.g., because it has just
been used in answering a previous question
(Bodenhausen & Wyer, 1987).
Contextual influences on information
accessibility are the major contributor to the
emergence of question order effects in survey
research, along with contextual influences
on question interpretation. The underlying
processes have been conceptualized in
several related models that are consistent
with current theorizing in social cognition
(e.g., Feldman & Lynch, 1988; Tourangeau,
1992). The next section summarizes the
most comprehensive model (Schwarz &
Bless, 1992a, 2007), which identifies the
conditions under which question order effects
emerge and predicts their direction, size, and
generalization across related items.
Information accessibility and use:
The emergence, direction, and size
of question order effects
Attitude questions ask respondents to provide
an evaluative judgment. To do so, respondents
need to form a mental representation of
the target (i.e., the object of judgment), as
well as a mental representation of some
standard against which the target is evaluated.
Both representations are context dependent
and include information that is chronically
accessible as well as information that is
only temporarily accessible—for example,
because it was brought to mind by preced-
ing questions. How accessible information
influences the judgment depends on how it
is used. Information that is included in the
temporary representation formed of the target
results in assimilation effects; that is, the
inclusion of positive (negative) information
results in a more positive (negative) judgment.
The size of assimilation effects increases
with the amount and extremity of temporarily
380 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
accessible information and decreases with the
amount and extremity of chronically accessi-
ble information included in the representation
of the target (Bless, Schwarz, & Wänke,
2003).
For example, Schwarz, Strack, and Mai
(1991) asked respondents to report their
marital satisfaction and their general life-
satisfaction in different question orders.
When the general life-satisfaction question
was asked first, it correlated with marital
satisfaction r = 0.32. Reversing the question
order, however, increased this correlation
to r = 0.67. This reflects that the marital
satisfaction question brought marriage related
information to mind that respondents included
in the representation formed of their lives
in general. This increase in correlation was
attenuated, r = 0.43, when questions about
three different life-domains (job, leisure time,
and marriage) preceded the general question,
thus bringing more diverse material to mind.
Parallel influences were observed in the mean
reports. Happily married respondents reported
higher, and unhappily married respondents
reported lower, general life-satisfaction when
their attention was drawn to their marriage by
the preceding question.
However, the same piece of accessible
information may also elicit a contrast effect;
that is, a more negative (positive) judgment,
the more positive (negative) information is
brought to mind. This is the case when
the information is excluded from, rather
than included in, the cognitive representation
formed of the target. For example, the above
study included a condition in which the mari-
tal satisfaction and life-satisfaction questions
were introduced with a joint lead-in that read,
‘We now have two questions about your life.
The first pertains to your marriage and the
second to your life in general.’ This lead-
in was designed to evoke the conversational
maxim of quantity, which enjoins speakers
to avoid redundancy when answering related
questions. Accordingly, respondents who
had just reported on their marriage should
now disregard this aspect of their lives
when answering the general life-satisfaction
question. Confirming this prediction, happily
married respondents now reported lower
general life-satisfaction, whereas unhappily
married respondents reported higher life-
satisfaction, indicating that they excluded
the positive (negative) marital information
from the representation formed of their lives
in general. These diverging effects reduced
the correlation to r = 0.18, from r = 0.67
when the same questions were asked in
the same order without a joint lead-in.
A control condition in which the general life-
satisfaction question was reworded to, ‘Aside
from your marriage, which you already told
us about, how satisfied are you with your
life in general?’ resulted in a highly similar
correlation of r = 0.20 (Schwarz et al.,
1991).
In addition, respondents may use excluded
information in constructing a standard of com-
parison or scale anchor. If the implications
of the temporarily accessible information are
more extreme than the implications of the
chronically accessible information used in
constructing a standard, they result in a more
extreme standard, eliciting contrast effects for
that reason. The size of comparison based
contrast effects increases with the extremity
and amount of temporarily accessible infor-
mation used in constructing the standard,
and decreases with the amount and extremity
of chronically accessible information used
in making this construction (Bless et al.,
2003). Comparison based contrast effects
generalize to all targets to which the standard
is applicable.
As an example, consider the impact of
political scandals on assessments of the
trustworthiness of politicians. Not surpris-
ingly, thinking about a politician who was
involved in a scandal, say Richard Nixon,
decreases trust in politicians in general. This
reflects that the exemplar is included in the
representation formed of the target ‘politicians
in general.’ If the trustworthiness question
pertains to a specific politician, however—say
Bill Clinton—the primed exemplar cannot be
included in the representation formed of the
target—after all, Bill Clinton is not Richard
Nixon. In this case, Richard Nixon may
serve as a standard of comparison, relative
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE 381

to which Bill Clinton seems very trustworthy.
An experiment with German exemplars con-
firmed these predictions (Schwarz & Bless,
1992b): Thinking about a politician who
was involved in a scandal decreased the
trustworthiness of politicians in general, but
increased the trustworthiness of all specific
exemplars assessed, as shown in Figure 34.2.
In general, the same information is likely to
result in assimilation effects in the evaluation
of superordinate target categories (which
allow for the inclusion of all information
pertaining to subordinate categories), but
in contrast effects in the evaluation of
lateral target categories (which are mutually
exclusive). These judgmental processes are
reflected in a wide range of discrepancies
between general and specific judgments
in public opinion research. For example,
Americans distrust Congress in general, but
trust their own representatives (e.g., Erikson,
Luttbeg, & Tedin, 1988). Similarly, members
of minority groups consistently report high
levels of discrimination against their group;
yet they also report that their own personal
experience was more benign. In each case,
these patterns are to be expected when we
take into account that recalling extreme and
vivid media examples drives the general and
the specific judgments in opposite directions,
as predicted on theoretical grounds.
Given the crucial role of inclusion/
exclusion operations in the construction of
mental representations, it is important to
understand their determinants. When thinking
about a topic, people generally assume that
whatever comes to mind bears on what they
are thinking about—or why else would it
come to mind now? Hence, the default is
to include information that comes to mind
in the representation of the target. This
renders assimilation effects more likely than
contrast effects. In fact, assimilation effects
(sometimes referred to as carry-over effects)
dominate the survey literature, and many
models intended to account for question order
effects don’t even offer a mechanism for
the conceptualization of contrast effects (e.g.,
Zaller, 1992), which severely limits their
usefulness as general theoretical frameworks.
Whereas inclusion is the more common
default, the exclusion of information needs

6
5.6
5 4.9
5

4
3.4

0
Political Class Individual Politicians
Control Scandal question asked

Figure 34.2 Trust in politicians in general and in individual politicians as a function of a

preceding scandal question
Note: Respondents rated the trustworthiness of German politicians in general (‘political class’) or
of three individual politicians (averaged); 9 = ‘very trustworthy.’ Adapted from Schwarz &
Bless (1992b)
382 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
to be triggered by salient features of the
question answering process. Any variable that
influences the categorization of information
can also determine the emergence of assimi-
lation and contrast effects. These variables can
be conceptualized as bearing on three implicit
decisions that respondents have to make with
regard to topic related information.
The first decision bears on why this
information comes to mind. Information that
seems to come to mind for the ‘wrong
reason,’ e.g., because respondents are aware
of the potential influence of a preceding
question, is likely to be excluded. This is
more common in experiments that present
allegedly separate and independent tasks than
in survey interviews, where the questions are
seen as part of the same ongoing conversation.
The second decision pertains to whether the
information that comes to mind bears on
the target of judgment or not. The content
of the context question, the superordinate
or lateral nature of the target category, the
extremity of the information or its representa-
tiveness for the target category are relevant at
this stage (see Schwarz & Bless, 1992a, 2007,
for examples). Finally, conversational norms
of nonredundancy may elicit the exclusion
of previously provided information, as seen
above (Schwarz et al., 1991).
Whenever any of these decisions results
in the exclusion of information from the
representation formed of the target, it will
elicit a contrast effect. Whether this contrast
effect is limited to the target, or generalizes
across related targets, depends on whether
the excluded information is merely subtracted
from the representation of the target or used
in constructing a standard against which the
target is evaluated. Conversely, whenever the
information that comes to mind is included
in the representation formed of the target,
it results in an assimilation effect. Hence,
the inclusion/exclusion model provides a
coherent conceptualization of the emergence,
direction, size, and generalization of context
effects in attitude measurement. These effects
can be reliably produced when the questions
are written to clearly operationalize the
relevant variables. Of course, this is not
always the case and some questions are too
mushy with regard to the conceptual variables
to allow strong predictions. Sudman et al.
(1996, chap. 5) provide a more extensive
discussion of these issues, with detailed
examples.
Question order effects are attenuated when
related questions are separated by a sufficient
number of buffer items, which renders the
information brought to mind by the earlier
question less accessible (for a review, see
Wänke & Schwarz, 1997). Similarly, pre-
ceding questions are less likely to influence
the judgments of older respondents, due to
age-related decline in memory. This age-
sensitivity of question order effects can
undermine cohort comparisons (for examples
see Schwarz & Knäuper, 2000).
Response order effects
Another major source of context effects in
attitude measurement is the order in which
response alternatives are presented. Response
order effects are most reliably obtained when
a question presents several plausible response
options (see Sudman et al., 1996, chap. 6,
for detailed discussions). To understand the
underlying processes, suppose a person is
asked to provide a few good reasons why
‘divorce should be easier to obtain.’ The
person can easily do so, but he or she could just
as easily provide some reasons why ‘divorce
should be more difficult to obtain.’When such
alternatives are juxtaposed within a question
(as in ‘Should divorce be easier to obtain
or more difficult to obtain?’), the outcome
depends on which alternative is considered
first. When respondents consider ‘easier’ and
generate some supportive thoughts, they are
likely to truncate the search process and
endorse this response option; but had they
considered ‘more difficult’ the same process
would have resulted in an endorsement of that
option. Again, respondents’judgment is based
on the temporary representation formed of the
attitude object, which is, in part, a function of
the response option they consider first.
Which option respondents consider first
depends on the order and mode in which
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE
the response alternatives are presented
(Krosnick & Alwin, 1987). When presented
in writing, respondents elaborate on the
implications of the response options in the
order presented. In this mode, an alternative
that elicits supporting thoughts is more likely
to be endorsed when presented early rather
than late on the list, giving rise to primacy
effects. In contrast, when the alternatives are
read to respondents, their opportunity to think
about the early ones is limited by the need
to listen to later ones. In this case, they are
more likely to work backwards, thinking first
about the last alternative read to them. When
this alternative elicits supporting thoughts, it
is likely to be endorsed, giving rise to recency
effects. Hence, a given alternative is more
likely to be endorsed when presented early
rather than late in a visual format (primacy
effect), but when presented late rather than
early in an auditory format (recency effect).
Sudman et al. (1996, chap. 6) review these
processes in more depth.
Response order effects are more
pronounced for older and less educated
respondents (see Knäuper, 1999, for
a meta-analysis), whose limited cognitive
resources further enhance the focus on a single
response alternative. This age-sensitivity of
response order effects can invite misleading
conclusions about cohort differences in the
reported attitude, suggesting, for example,
that older respondents are more liberal
than younger respondents under one order
condition, but more conservative under the
other (Schwarz & Knäuper, 2000).
Attitude strength
Survey researchers have long assumed that
attitudes vary in their degree of ‘strength,’
‘centrality,’ or ‘crystallization,’ and that con-
text effects are limited to attitudes that are
weak and not (yet) crystallized (e.g., Cantril,
1944; Converse, 1964; see Krosnick &
Abelson, 1992, for a review). Despite its
popularity, this hypothesis ‘has clearly been
disconfirmed’as Krosnick and Abelson (1992,
p. 193) concluded after an extensive review.
In the most comprehensive test, based on
383
more than a dozen experiments and different
self-report measures of attitude strength,
Krosnick and Schuman (1988) found no
evidence that context effects are stronger for
weak attitudes, except for the not surpris-
ing finding that respondents with a weak
attitude are more likely to choose a middle
alternative. This observation contrasts with
findings in other domains, where strongly
held attitudes have been found to be more
stable over time and less likely to change
in response to persuasive messages (see
Krosnick & Abelson, 1992, for a review).
From a social cognition perspective, this
apparent discrepancy is not surprising. First,
many context effects reflect differences in
respondents’ inferences about the pragmatic
meaning of the question, resulting in answers
to somewhat different questions. These effects
are unlikely to be influenced by attitude
strength. Second, people process persuasive
messages and survey interviews with different
background assumptions. They understand
that persuaders want to influence them and
are prepared to scrutinize their arguments
(Friestad & Wright, 1994). In contrast, they
assume that survey interviews are intended
to assess rather than change their opinions.
Moreover, the thoughts brought to mind by
preceding questions are their own thoughts,
and drawing on these thoughts seems less
problematic than accepting the arguments
presented by others, who may be following
their own agenda. As a result, the question–
answer sequence of survey interviews can
elicit attitude and behavior change that goes
far beyond what skilled persuaders can hope
to accomplish (e.g., Morwitz, Johnson, &
Schmittlein, 1993).
Finally, it is worth noting that mental
construal models of attitude judgment, like
the inclusion/exclusion model (Schwarz &
Bless, 1992a) presented above, can account
for stability as well as change in attitude
judgments. Empirically, an attitude is con-
sidered ‘stable’ when respondents provide
highly similar judgments at two points in
time. From a construal perspective, this
is to be expected when the question is
presented in the same or a highly similar
384 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
context or when the amount and extremity
of chronically accessible information exceeds
the amount and extremity of contextual
information. Construal models can therefore
conceptualize the context dependency as well
as independency of attitude judgments and
specify the conditions under which each may
be observed (see Schwarz & Bohner, 2001).
FORMATTING THE RESPONSE
Having formed a judgment, respondents
usually need to format it to fit the response
alternatives provided by the researcher. An
issue that needs particular attention at this
stage emerges when respondents are asked to
rate several items along the same rating scale.
As numerous experiments have demonstrated,
respondents use the most extreme items of a
set to anchor the endpoints of the scale (see
Parducci, 1965; Ostrom & Upshaw, 1968).
As a result, a given item will be rated as less
extreme if presented in the context of a more
extreme one than if presented in the context
of a less extreme one. This undermines the
comparability of ratings across studies when
the same item is presented in the context of
other, differentially extreme items.
EDITING THE RESPONSE
Finally, respondents may want to edit
their response before they communicate it,
reflecting considerations of social desirability
and self-presentation. This is particularly
likely when the question is threatening (see
DeMaio, 1984, for a review). Editing is more
pronounced in face-to-face interviews than
in self-administered questionnaires, which
provide a higher degree of confidentiality
(e.g., Smith, 1979; Krysan, Schuman, Scott, &
Beatty, 1994). All methods designed to reduce
socially desirable responding address one of
these two factors (see Bradburn et al., 2004,
chap. 3, for a review and advice).
Although socially desirable responding is
undoubtedly a threat to the validity of survey
results, many of the more robust findings
may reflect the impact of several distinct
processes. For example, white respondents
have frequently been found to mute neg-
ative sentiments about African-Americans
when the interviewer is black rather than
white (e.g., Williams, 1964; Hatchett &
Schuman, 1976). From a social desirability
perspective, the answers they provide to
the interviewer are assumed not to reflect
their ‘true’ attitudes. However, the friendly
conversation with a middle class African-
American interviewer may itself serve as
input into the attitude judgment, resulting
in (temporary) ‘real’ attitude change, much
as incidental exposure to the names or
pictures of liked African-Americans has been
found to affect attitudes toward the group in
laboratory experiments (e.g., Bodenhausen,
Schwarz, Bless, & Wänke, 1995). Hence, the
impact of social desirability per se is often
difficult to isolate in survey data. Moreover,
social desirability certainly affects everyday
behavior, including interracial interactions. Its
influence should therefore not be regarded as
a simple artifact of survey interviewing; nor
may we want to eliminate it when our goal is
to predict everyday behavior.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
As this selective review illustrates, research
into the cognitive and communicative pro-
cesses underlying survey responses has
moved far beyond the ‘art of asking questions’
(Payne, 1951) and increasingly provides a
scientific grounding for questionnaire design.
The accumulating insights provide a useful
framework for the wording and ordering
of questions and the choice of response
alternatives (Sudman et al., 1996; Tourangeau
et al., 2000). Moreover, the new techniques
of cognitive interviewing allow us to identify
problems before a survey goes into the field
(Schwarz & Sudman, 1996).
At the same time, there is no hope for
a silver bullet that eliminates the context
dependency of respondents’ answers. Instead,
the emerging picture is consistent with current
research in social and cognitive psychology
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVEY RESPONSE
that emphasizes the situated and constructive
nature of human judgment (for reviews see
Schwarz, 2000; Smith & Semin, 2004). From
this perspective, judgment stands in the ser-
vice of action, and merely retrieving opinions
formed in the past may not serve us well.
To guide action, a useful system of judgment
should be informed by past experience, but be
highly sensitive to the specifics of the present;
it should overweight recent experience and
experience from similar situations, and take
current goals and concerns into account—in
short, it should be highly context sensitive.
Unfortunately, respondents bring this context
sensitivity to the interview, where it creates a
serious challenge for public opinion research;
to the extent that respondents’ judgments
reflect the immediate context created in
the survey interview, generalizations to the
population are fraught with uncertainty. There
is no reliable solution to this challenge. The
best we can do is to increase the odds that
we become aware of contextual influences by
embedding experiments in regular surveys.
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