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Survey Research

A collection of 13 issues

The Perils of Balancing Scales

Randomization of scale order (balancing) across respondents is common practice. It is done to ‘cancel’ errors generated by ‘satisficers’ who presumably pick the first option on a scale without regard to content. The practice is assumed to have no impact on the propensity of satisficers to pick the first option,

Expanding the Database Yet Further

“College sophomores may not be people,” wrote Carl Hovland, quoting Tolman. Yet research done on them continues to be a significant part of all research in Social Science. The status quo is a function of cost and effort. In 2007, Cindy Kam, proposed using the university staff as a way

Coding Issues in the ANES Cumulative File

I have, on occasion, used American National Election Studies (ANES) cumulative file to do over time comparisons. Roughly half of those times, I have found patterns that don’t make much sense. Only a small fraction of the times when the patterns didn’t make sense have I chosen to