Questions and Answers: Schuman and Presser's Public Opinion Classic

Director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago

y initial reaction is that language, cognition, and communication are so complex that comprehensive and highly predictive understanding of any major aspect (question wording, context effects, and so forth) is likely to elude us for a very long time. We do know a large number of important, smaller things, like that double negatives confuse people and increase error in measurement. (But even that is probably language specific [that is, a major problem in English, but perhaps not in some other languages], and it may well interact with education and other factors.) Thus, while I think we know a lot more about good question design, measurement effects, and how people understand, process, and respond to questions than we did when Questions & Answers was published, I don't think we are near to achieving "lawfulness" in our understanding.

From Tom W. Smith