A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences

By J. Zaller, S. Feldman. 1992

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Citations in the corpus

Evaluating the Social Impact of Generative AI Systems in Systems and Society (2023, background): “Evaluating the effect AI has on people and societies, and evaluating people and groups themselves encounters similar challenges as those arising in sampling [20], surveying [126], determining preferences [270], and working with human subjects [131, 12], in addition to challenges that stem from the p”
Attitudes as Object-Evaluation Associations of Varying Strength. (2007, background): “In light of the research summarized in the preceding section, I have to admit to some bewilderment regarding recent discussions portraying all (or virtually all) attitudes as momentary constructions (e.g., Schwarz & Bohner, 2001; Zaller & Feldman, 1992; see also Schwarz, this issue).”
Ambivalence and certainty can interact to predict attitude stability over time (2016, background): “For ambivalent attitudes, however, either positive or negative features or assessments of the attitude object could be more salient or accessible at any given time, so people are less likely to report the same overall evaluation at every opportunity (cf. Zaller & Feldman, 1992).”
Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes You Don't: Citizens' Ambivalence About Abortion (2002, result): “…and similar findings reported by other scholars (e.g., Hochschild, 1981), the authors concluded that “most people possess opposing considerations on most issues, that is, considerations that might lead them to decide the issue either way” (Zaller & Feldman, 1992, p. 585; see also Zaller, 1992).”
A Democratic Polity? (2002, background): “One individual-level response is that it is the ambiguities of the questions, or the complexities of the issues, rather than nonattitudes, that produce respondent instability (e.g., Zaller & Feldman, 1992).”
Theoretical and Empirical Implications of Attitude Strength (2004, background): “…presence of ambivalence and its import for representation and democracy than on the impact on the individuals who are experiencing the ambivalence.5 Zaller and Feldman (1992) depict the degrees of ambivalence in responses to open-ended questions about the welfare state, but not how the differing…”
Affective Contagion in Effortful Political Thinking (2014, methodology): “To show the influence of these subliminal affective primes on the retrieval of considerations about political issues, we engaged subjects in a cued thought-listing procedure (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981; Erisen & Erisen, 2012; Gamson, 1992; Lane, 1969; Zaller & Feldman, 1992).”
Examining the Mediators of Agenda Setting: A New Experimental Paradigm Reveals the Role of Emotions (2007, background): “…facing the nation, or to make any other political judgment for that matter, some considerations will automatically come to the forefront of people’s minds, either because the construct is chronically accessible or was recently made accessible by an external stimulus (e.g., Zaller & Feldman, 1992).”
Mecro-Economic Voting: Local Information and Micro-Perceptions of the Macro-Economy (2014, unknown): “20The idea that individuals have different costs of learning information is reflected in many public opinion studies, for example: Alvarez and Franklin (1994); Alvarez (1997); Bartels (1986); Luskin (1987); Zaller (1992); and Zaller and Feldman (1992).”
Framing Emotional Response (2004, background): “As Zaller and Feldman (1992) argued, individuals do not possess a single "attitude" but instead harbor "opposing considerations on most issues" (p.”