From Jon Krosnick

Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, professor of communication, professor of political science, and professor of psychology, Stanford University

There is good theory that explains most past results and allows reasonably confident prediction to future ones in all the areas addressed by Schuman and Presser. At the time it was published, serious, in-depth psychological analysis had been done of some response effects Questions & Answers examined (such as acquiescence), and much work had been done on other response effects the book examined, but it hadn't yet been integrated into coordinated theoretical accounts drawing heavily on psychology.

My reading of the literature before and after Questions & Answers, pulling it all together in light of the conceptual framework that Schuman and Presser built, reveals a remarkable array of theoretical explanations for nearly all the response effects examined. The theoretical accounts don't explain all the variance, but they explain a lot. It is wonderful to see how Questions & Answers later inspired both original scholarship and careful looks backward at what was there but had never been coordinated into a single view. Very exciting for the field!

To Michael Schober

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