Research Tips

Question Order Effects

You may be aware that the way a question is asked can influence the response, but did you know that the order in which questions are asked can also influence responses? Researchers refer to this as priming, and priming can have profound influences on research findings. For example, a series of surveys conducted over the years shows what appears to be a decline in public faith in elections in the United States, yet there is evidence that this is at least partially attributable to changes in the survey questions immediately preceding the questions on public faith in elections.¹

It’s possible to test for priming effects by having questions in different orders in different versions of a questionnaire, randomly assigning respondents to the different versions, and then using statistical procedures to compare responses for the different versions.

¹ Bartels, Larry (2002), “Question Order and Declining Faith in Elections”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 66(1), 67-79.