Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-10T06:18:09.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Nathaniel Wilcox  and
Christopher Wlezien
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 5 , 1993 , pp. 181 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Political Methodology 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, Christopher H. 1983. ‘Toward Theories of Data: The State of Political Methodology.” In Finifter, Ada W., ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline. Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Achen, Christopher H. 1975. “Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response.” American Political Science Review 69: 1218–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alt, James E., and Alec Chrystal, K. 1983. Political Economics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bishop, George F., Oldendick, Robert W., and Tuchfarber, Alfred J. 1984. “What Must My Interest in Politics Be if I Just Told You ‘I Don't Know.’” Public Opinion Quarterly 48: 510–19.Google Scholar
Bishop, George F., Oldendick, Robert W., and Tuchfarber, Alfred J. 1982. “Political Information Processing: Question Order and Context Effects.” Political Behavior 4: 177–200.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard. 1991. Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chow, Gregory C. 1960. ‘Tests of Equality between Sets of Coefficients in Two Linear Regressions.” Econometrica 28: 591–605.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1977. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Conover, Pamela, Feldman, Stanley, and Knight, Kathleen. 1987. “The Personal and Political Underpinnings of Economic Forecasts.” American Journal of Political Science 31: 559–83.Google Scholar
Converse, Pamela, and Presser, Stanley. 1986. Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Durr, Robert H. 1993. “What Moves Policy Sentiment?” American Political Science Review 87: 158–72.Google Scholar
Erbring, Lutz, Goldenberg, Edie N., and Miller, Arthur H. 1980. “Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media.” American Journal of Political Science 24: 16–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, Robert S. 1989. “Economic Conditions and the Presidential Vote.” American Political Science Review 83: 567–73.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., and Knight, Kathleen. 1993. “Ideological Sophistication and the Stability of Ideological and Partisan Sentiment.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Fair, Ray. 1988. “The Effect of Economic Events on the Vote for President: A 1984 Update.” Political Behavior 10: 168–79.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stanley. 1989. “Measuring Issue Preferences: The Problem of Response Instability.” Political Analysis 1: 25–60.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stanley. 1982. “Economic Self-Interest and Political Behavior.” American Journal of Political Science 26: 446–66.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1978. “Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 22: 426–43.Google Scholar
Fischoff, Baruch. 1982. “Debiasing.” In Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A., eds., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Charles H., and Jackson, John E. 1983. “The Dynamics of Party Identification.” American Political Science Review 77: 957–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald P., and Palmquist, Brian. 1990. “Of Artifacts and Partisan Stability.” American Journal of Political Science 34: 872–902.Google Scholar
Hastie, Reid, and Park, Bernadette. 1986. “The Relationship between Memory and Judgment Depends on Whether the Judgment Is On-Line or Memory-Based.” Psychological Review 93: 258–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibbs, Douglas A. 1987. The American Political Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer. 1981. What's Fair? Americans’ Attitudes toward Distributive Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto. 1991. Is Anyone Responsible? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Kinder, Donald. 1987. News That Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Judge, George G., Griffiths, W. E., Carter Hill, R., Lutkepohl, Helmut, and Lee, Tsoung-Chao. 1985. The Theory and Practice of Econometrics. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kiewiet, D. Roderick. 1983. Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Roderick Kiewiet, D. 1981. “Sociotropic Politics.” British Journal of Political Science 11: 129–61.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Roderick Kiewiet, D. 1979. “Economic Discontent and Political Behavior The Role of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional Voting.” American Journal of Political Science 23: 495–527.Google Scholar
Kramer, Gerald H. 1971. “Short-term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964.” American Political Science Review 65: 131–43.Google Scholar
Kramer, Gerald H. 1983. “The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting.” American Political Science Review 77: 92–111.Google Scholar
Lau, Richard, Sears, David O., and Jessor, Tom. 1990. “Fact or Artifact Revisited: Survey Instrument Effects and Pocketbook Politics.” Political Behavior 12: 217–42.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1988. Economics and Elections. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1985. “Pocketbook Voting in U.S. National Election Studies: Fact or Artifact?” American Journal of Political Science 29: 348–56.Google Scholar
MacKuen, Michael B. 1984. “Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change.” American Political Science Review 78: 372–91.Google Scholar
MacKuen, Michael B., Erikson, Robert S., and Stimson, James A. 1992. “Peasants or Bankers? The American Electorate and the U.S. Economy.” American Political Science Review 86: 597–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKuen, Michael B., Erikson, Robert S., and Stimson, James A. 1989. “Macropartisanship.” American Political Science Review 83: 1125–42.Google Scholar
Markus, Gregory. 1988. “The Impact of Personal and National Economic Conditions on the Presidential Vote: A Pooled Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 32: 137–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGraw, Kathleen, Lodge, Milton, and Stroh, Patrick. 1990. “On-Line Processing in Candidate Evaluation: The Effects of Order, Issue Importance, and Sophistication.” Political Behavior 12: 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Arthur H., Wlezien, Christopher, and Hildreth, Anne. 1991. “A Reference Group Theory of Partisan Coalitions.” Journal of Politics 53: 1134–49.Google Scholar
Nisbett, Richard, and Ross, Lee. 1980. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I., and Jones, Calvin C. 1979. “Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties, and the Vote.” American Political Science Review 73: 1071–90.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I., and Shapiro, Robert Y. 1992. The Rational Public. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Petty, Richard E., and Cacioppo, John T. 1986. Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Pindyck, Robert S., and Rubinfeld, Daniel L. 1991. Econometric Models and Economic Forecasts. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Schuman, Howard, and Presser, Stanley. 1981. Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Sears, David O., and Lau, Richard R. 1983. “Inducing Apparently Self-Interested Political Preferences.” American Journal of Political Science 27: 223–52.Google Scholar
Taylor, Shelley E., and Fiske, Susan. 1978. “Salience, Attention, and Attribution: Top of the Head Phenomona.” In Berkowitz, Leonard, ed., Advances in Social Psychology. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos. 1977. “Features of Similarity.” Psychological Review 84: 327–52.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Nathaniel T. 1993. “Lottery Choice: Incentives, Complexity and Decision Time.” Economic Journal 103: 1397–417.Google Scholar
Wright, William F., and Aboul-Ezz, Mohammed E. 1988. “Effects of Extrinsic Incentives on the Quality of Frequency Assessments.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 41: 143–52.Google Scholar
Wyer, Robert S., and Ottati, Victor C. 1993. “Political Information Processing.” In Iyengar, Shanto and McGuire, William J., eds., Explorations in Political Psychology. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wyer, Robert S., and Srull, Thomas. 1989. Memory and Cognition in Its Social Context. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of the Survey Response. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zaller, John, and Feldman, Stanley. 1992. “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences.” American Journal of Political Science 36: 579–616.Google Scholar