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DELIBERATELY BIASING SURVEY QUESTIONS
Author(s) -
Fischer A. J.,
Lewis R. D.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
australian journal of statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.434
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-842X
pISSN - 0004-9581
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-842x.1985.tb00544.x
Subject(s) - biasing , set (abstract data type) , context (archaeology) , response bias , psychology , confirmation bias , significant difference , selection bias , lead (geology) , social psychology , computer science , statistics , mathematics , engineering , geography , electrical engineering , archaeology , voltage , geomorphology , geology , programming language
summary In “before” and “after” surveys of Attitudes Towards Random Breath Testing in South Australia, three basic versions of the questionnaire were used. In the first, a set of “lead‐up” questions, which were designed to deliberately bias the results towards acceptance of the tests, was included before the main questions; in the second, there were no lead‐up questions; in the third, a different set of lead‐up questions was used, and was aimed at deliberately biasing the results against the tests. The results in two out of the four attempts to influence the answers (compared with no lead‐up questions) were significant in the expected direction, and in the other two cases were in the correct direction but not significant. The difference between the positive‐and negative‐biasing versions was highly significant in both cases. It is important to be aware that changes in context rather than in question wording per se can give rise to effects which dwarf the sampling error.