The Contamination of Responses to Survey Items: Economic Perceptions and Political Judgments

Much research shows that individuals' economic perceptions strongly influence their political judgments, but some scholars suggest that typical survey designs may induce this influence due to the order and proximity of items in the surveys. This study explores the extent of such “contamination” of responses to both economic and political items in surveys, using an experimental design that varies survey item order across subjects. The results show that contamination is present in responses to both political and economic items, particularly when they are placed close together. Perhaps most importantly, the pervasive and deep contamination of responses to economic items suggests potentially serious implications for research on how economic perceptions influence political judgments. Ultimately, the findings are suggestive about the parameters of contamination and also the general nature (and theory) of the survey response.

[1]  N. Wilcox.  Lottery choice: incentives, complexity and decision time , 1993 .

[2]  Robert H. Durr.  What Moves Policy Sentiment? , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[3]  Robert S. Erikson,et al.  Peasants or Bankers? The American Electorate and the U.S. Economy , 1992, American Political Science Review.

[4]  S. Feldman,et al.  A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences , 1992 .

[5]  Christopher Wlezien,et al.  A Reference Group Theory of Partisan Coalitions , 1991, The Journal of Politics.

[6]  Richard A. Brody,et al.  Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support , 1991 .

[7]  D. O. Sears,et al.  Fact or artifact revisited: Survey instrument effects and pocketbook politics , 1990 .

[8]  Donald P. Green,et al.  Of Artifacts and Partisan Instability , 1990 .

[9]  Patrick J. Stroh,et al.  On-line processing in candidate evaluation: The effects of issue order, issue importance, and sophistication , 1990 .

[10]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Memory and Cognition in Its Social Context , 1989 .

[11]  Robert S. Erikson,et al.  Economic Conditions and the Presidential Vote , 1989, American Political Science Review.

[12]  S. Feldman.  Measuring Issue Preferences: The Problem of Response Instability , 1989, Political Analysis.

[13]  William F. Wright,et al.  Effects of extrinsic incentives on the quality of frequency assessments , 1988 .

[14]  Franziska Marquart,et al.  Communication and persuasion : central and peripheral routes to attitude change , 1988 .

[15]  D. Hibbs.  The American Political Economy , 1987 .

[16]  P. J. Conover,et al.  The Personal and Political Underpinnings of Economic Forecasts , 1987 .

[17]  S. Presser,et al.  Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire. , 1986 .

[18]  R. Hastie,et al.  The relationship between memory and judgment depends on whether the judgment task is memory-based or on-line , 1986 .

[19]  M. Lewis-Beck.  Pocketbook Voting in U.S. National Election Studies: Fact or Artifact? , 1985 .

[20]  Peter Schmidt,et al.  The Theory and Practice of Econometrics , 1985 .

[21]  Robert W. Oldendick,et al.  What Must My Interest in Politics Be If I Just Told You “I Don't Know”? , 1984 .

[22]  Michael B. Mackuen.  Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change , 1984, American Political Science Review.

[23]  D. Kiewiet,et al.  Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues. , 1984 .

[24]  John E. Jackson,et al.  The Dynamics of Party Identification , 1983, American Political Science Review.

[25]  D. O. Sears,et al.  Inducing Apparently Self-Interested Political Preferences , 1983 .

[26]  Gerald H. Kramer,et al.  The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting , 1983, American Political Science Review.

[27]  Robert W. Oldendick,et al.  Political information processing: Question order and context effects , 1982 .

[28]  L. Ross,et al.  Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. , 1981 .

[29]  Arthur H. Miller,et al.  Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media , 1980 .

[30]  Benjamin I. Page,et al.  Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote , 1979, American Political Science Review.

[31]  D. Kinder,et al.  Economic Discontent and Political Behavior: The Role of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional Voting , 1979 .

[32]  M. Fiorina.  Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-Analysis* , 1978 .

[33]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Salience, Attention, and Attribution: Top of the Head Phenomena , 1978 .

[34]  A. Tversky.  Features of Similarity , 1977 .

[35]  D. Rubinfeld,et al.  Econometric models and economic forecasts , 2002 .

[36]  Christopher H. Achen.  Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response , 1975, American Political Science Review.

[37]  R. Oaxaca.  Another Look at Tests of Equality between Sets of Coefficients in Two Linear Regressions , 1974 .

[38]  G. Kramer.  Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964 , 1971, American Political Science Review.

[39]  Angus Campbell,et al.  The American voter , 1960 .

[40]  G. Chow.  Tests of equality between sets of coefficients in two linear regressions (econometrics voi 28 , 1960 .