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Science 22 May 1987:
Vol. 236. no. 4804, pp. 957 - 959
DOI: 10.1126/science.236.4804.957
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Articles

Problems in the Use of Survey Questions to Measure Public Opinion

HOWARD SCHUMAN 1 and JACQUELINE SCOTT 1

1 Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248.

Sample interview surveys are frequently proposed and sometimes used as a way of studying public choices among alternatives. Questions in such surveys may be either "open" or "closed." Two experiments are reported that demonstrate the difficulty of inferring not only absolute levels but even relative orderings of public choices from either type of question, although such questions can be used more successfully to study temporal change or variations across social categories.

Submitted on December 29, 1986
Accepted on March 25, 1987

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)