Articlebronze2001

The Impact of “No Opinion” Response Options on Data Quality

Jon A. Krosnick · Allyson L. Holbrook · Matthew K. Berent · Richard T. Carson · W. Michael Hanemann · Raymond J. Kopp +7 more

546 citations0/0 files storedPublic Opinion Quarterly

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Survey Methodology and Nonresponse Psychometric Methodologies and Testing Survey Sampling and Estimation Techniques

Abstract

According to many seasoned survey researchers, offering a no-opinion option should reduce the pressure to give substantive responses felt by respondents who have no true opinions. By contrast, the survey satisficing perspective suggests that no-opinion options may discourage some respondents from doing the cognitive work necessary to report the true opinions they do have. We address these arguments using data from nine experiments carried out in three household surveys. Attraction to no-opinion options was found to be greatest among respondents lowest in cognitive skills (as measured by educational attainment), among respondents answering secretly instead of orally, for questions asked later in a survey, and among respondents who devoted little effort to the reporting process. The quality of attitude reports obtained (as measured by over-time consistency and responsiveness to a question manipulation) was not compromised by the omission of no-opinion options. These results suggest that inclusion of no-opinion options in attitude measures may not enhance data quality and instead may preclude measurement of some meaningful opinions.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 546 citations exist upstream.

References

1993The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.1993Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement 2000The Psychology of Survey Response 1989Using surveys to value public goods: the contingent valuation method 1991Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys 1999Accounting for the effects of accountability.1985Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review 1986The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin.

Cited by

2008Face-to-Face versus Web Surveying in a High-Internet-Coverage Population: Differences in Response Quality 2013Assessing what to address in science communication 2008Money, Time, and Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Quick Recall and Political Learning Skills 2007Age, health, and the willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions: a contingent valuation survey of Shizuoka, Japan, residents 2017A classification of response scale characteristics that affect data quality: a literature review

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.