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It has been widely r ecognized that the context in w h i c h a q u e stion is placed in a survey i n t erview may affe c t the obtained responses (cf., . For example, placing a q uestion at different po s i t i o n s in the i n t e r view or questionnaire (e.g., A n drews & or, c h angi n g the order of two questions (e.g., In the present paper, we will address a specific context effect in a theoretical framework that is derived from r e s e a r c h on the activation of information and the logic of conversation . Specifically, we will explore under which conditions preceding spec i f i c questions affect r e s ponses to subsequent general ones, and vice versa. Tur n e r , for e x a m ple, c o mpared answers of mar r i e d respondents who were asked about "happiness with life in general" when the same q u e s t i o n was p l a ced either after the more specific question about happiness with marriage or after respondents' evalua t i o n of their own financial coniitions. General happiness ratings were consistently high e r if they were assessed after the specific question about h a p p i n e s s with marriage rather than after the q u e s t i o n about one's f i n a n cial situation. The reason for this context effect is seen in the possibility that the parti c u l a r l y high ratings of h a p p i n e s s w i t h marriage may influence the general happi n e s s rating in the same direction. reports a c o r r e l a t i o n of gamma = .75 for the two measures. There was no evidence, however, that the s p e c i fic marital happiness ques t i o n was influe n c e d by the c o n text in a similar way. The finding that the response to a more general target q u e s t i o n will be " a s s i m i l a t e d " toward the response to a more s p e c i f i c c o n text question is readily explained by psychological the o r i e s of cognitive accessibility . Th e s e t h e o rists found that an ambiguous concept will be i n t e r p r e t e d in terms of the applicable information that is most a c c e s s i b l e to the respondent at the time. Prior use of the information, p a r t i cularly the recency and frequency of prior use (cf., , were found to be the most important d e t e r m i nants of accessibility. A ccessibility of information may also influence a j u d g m e n t by systematically biasing the sample of information on w h i c h the judgment is based. This is p a r t i c u l a r l y true if a r e s p o n d e n t is faced with a general judgment task that does not s p e c i f y the relevant information (cf., and by , and their r e l e vance for survey situations has been noted by . In terms, the specific r e f e r e n t "wife" is "subtracted" in the i n t e r p r e t a tion of the more general concept of "family". This is not the case for c o n v e r s a t i o n B. There, it is more likely that the answer The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. -10to the second q u estion will include the wife's well-b e i n g because this i n formation has not yet been provided and is therefore a new and informative contribution to the conversation. It is important to note that the "given-new contract" operates The general qu e s t i o n asked r e s p ondents to i n d i c a t e on an 11-point scale "how happy" they were "with life in general". The endpoints were labelled "not so happy" and "extremely happy". The domain of happiness that was used as the specific q u e s t i o n was " d a t i n g " . found that "happiness with dating" was most closely related to general happiness in a student p o p u l a t i o n and therefore, a que s t i o n about dating hap p i n e s s was considered functionally equivalent wit h the specific q u e s t i o n about m a r i t a l happiness for the adult surveys. To be precise, the students were asked "how h appy are y ou wi t h yo u r dating" a n d'the response scale was identical to that of the general h a p p i n e s s question. The questions were asked under three experimental conditions. There was a control The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. -accessible when the general question was answered, it would not be u s e d . The degree of relatedness be t w e e n the answers to the specific and the general happiness question was assessed by the Pearson c o r r e lation between the ratings on the response scale. As can be seen from , the c o r r e l a t i o n b e tween "general happiness" and "happiness wi t h dating" was very small (r = .16) From it can be seen that the mean ratings of n e i t h e r general nor specific happiness were s i g n i f i c a n t l y affected by the experimental manipulations. In addition, the p a ttern of s t a Results shows that the pa t t e r n of correlation c o e f f i c i e n t s is about here the same as for Experimen t 1. The correlation b e t w e e n "general happiness" and "frequency of dating" was very small and not d i f ferent from 0 (r = -.12) in the control condition w h e r e the s p e cific q u estion was placed after the more general one. The r e l a tionship between the two v a r iables increased significantly. (r = .66) , z = 5.04, p < .001, wh e n the ques t i o n about dating frequency pr e c e d e d the general happiness question. And again, when both questions were placed in the same conversational c o n text, the correlation was reduced (r = .15), z = 3.43, p < .0(51, and somewhat, but not si g n i f i c a n t l y higher than in the control conditions, z = 1.44. As in Experiment 1, the means were not affected by the experimental m a n i p u l a t i o n and the standard d e v i a tions cannot account for the p a t t e r n of correlations. This can be seen from . The results of the second experiment add further support to the proposed mechanism. They show a "part-whole-assimilation" eff e c t is obtained if the specific content is activated before the g e n e ral question. A nd they replicate the "part-whole-contrast" effect if both q u e s t i o n s are placed in the same c ommunication context. Further, these results rule out the pos s i b i l i t y that the p a r t i c u lar pattern of correlation s was merely caused by a differ e n t i a l use of the r esponse scale. Rather, the increased accessibility of the specific i n f o r m a t i o n and, under the appropriate condition, the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the content of the general question in the light of the g i v e n -n e w contract seem to be responsible for the e f f e c t s . So far, the tendency not to use the content of a p r e c e d i n g q u e stion for the answer to a subse q u e n t q u e s t i o n but to "subtract" its referents in the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n (cf. has only been applied to situations where two contents stand in a part-whole relationship. The same mechanisms, however, should not only apply if two con tents are h i e r a r c h i c a l l y rel a t e d but also if they are s e m a n t i c a l investigation, respondents were given the following two q u e stions: "How happy are you wit h your life as a whole"? and "Taken all things together, how satisfied are you with your l i f e " ? The questions had to be answered on 11-point scales where "1" was labeled "unhappy" or "unsatisfied" and 11 was labeled "happy" and "satisfied", respectively. For some respondents, a c o n v e r s a t i o n a l context was intro d u c e d by the following paragraph: "The following two questions refer to two aspects of your personal well-being: a) happiness with life, b) satisfaction with life." For o ther respondents, this paragraph was omitted. As can be seen from , the d i f f e r e n c e between the cor- nal context. As in the two previous studies, the m ean judgments did not differ as a f u n c t i o n of the exp e r i m e n t a l m a n i p u l a t i o n and differences in the var i a n c e s cannot account for the p a t t e r n of correlations (see ). The following two questions refer to two aspects of your personal well-being: a) happi n e s s wit h life, b) s a t i s f a c t i o n with life. Correlations b e t w e e n "General H a p p i n e s s " and "Happiness with D a t i n g " Correlations bet w e e n "General Happiness" and " Frequency of Dating" The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. -30 : Correlations betw e e n " H a p p i n e s s " and "Satisfaction No significant m ean differences for both variables. Measures of s e l f -r eported well-being Their affective, cognitive, and other components Social Indicators R e s e a r c h Schuessler Methoden der Analyse zeitbezogener Daten. Vortragsskripten der ZUMA-Arbei tstagung vom 25 ALLBUS Manfred Küchler Verallgemeinerte Lineare Modelle in der empirischen Sozialforschung Glenn R. Carroll Dynamic analysis of discrete dependent variables: A didactic essay Manfred Küchler Zur Messung der Stabilität von Wählerpotentialen Manfred Küchler Zur Konstanz der Recallfrage Rolf Porst " ALLBUS 1982" -Systematische Variablenübersicht und erste Ansätze zu einer Kritik des Fragenprogramms Peter Ph. Mohler SAR -Simple AND Retrieval mit dem Siemens-EDT-Textmanipulationsprogramm Cornelia Krauth Vergleichsstudien zum ALLBUS Bernd Wegener Two approaches to the analysis of judgments of prestige: Interindi vidual differences and the general scale Rolf Porst Synopse der ALLBUS-Variablen. Die Systematik des ALLBUS-Fragenprogramms und ihre inhaltliche Ausgestaltung Mohler Qualshop (ZUMA-Arbeitstagung zum ' 'Datenmanagement bei qualitativen Erhebungsverfahren") -Sammlung von Arbeitspapieren und -berichten, Teil I + II Bernd Wegener Gibt es Sozialprestige? Margrit Rexroth Erfahrungen mit einer Technik zur Bewertung von Interviewerverhalten Frank Faulbaum Ergebnisse der Methodenstudie zur internationalen Vergleichbarkeit von Einstellungsskalen in der Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften Dagmar Krebs Zur Konstruktion von Einstellungsskalen im interkulturellen Vergleich Hartmut Esser Können Befragte lügen? Zum Konzept des "wahren Wertes" im Rahmen der handTungstheoretisehen Erklärung von Situationseinflüssen bei der Befragung Bernd Wegener Prestige and Status as Function of Unit Size FraniT Faulbaum ' Very^-Soft Modeling: The Logical Specification and Analysis of Complex Process Explanations with Arbitrary Degrees of Underidentification and Variables of Arbitrary Aggregation and Measurement Levels Peter Prüfer Ein Instrument zur Bestimmung des sozialen Status von Zielhaushalten Gabriele Hippler, Hans-Jürgen Hippler Reducing Refusal Rates in the Case of Threatening Questions: The "Door-in-the-Face" Technique Hartmut Esser Befragtenverhalten als "rationales Handeln" -Zur Erklärung von Antwortverzerrungen in Interviews Rolf Porst, Peter Prüfer, Michael Wiedenbeck, Klaus Zeifang Methodenbericht zum Zerlegung der Varianz der Meßdifferenz zwischen zwei Meßzeitpunkten einer Panel-Befragung Einige Ergebnisse von Vergleichstests zwischen den PC-und Mainframe-Versionen von SPSS und Der Stichprobenplan zum Projekt 1SSP 1985 und seine Realisierung Günter Rothe Bootstrap in generalisierten linearen Modellen Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Tabellenband Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Abschlußbericht Michael Braun, Rolf Porst ALLBUS-Bibliographie (6. Fassung Michael Wiedenbeck Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS 1986" Norbert Schwarz, Julia Bienias What mediates the Impact of Response Alternatives on Behavioral Reports Brigitte Chassein The Range of Response Alternatives May Determine the Meaning of the Question: Further Evidence on Informative Functions of Response Alter natives GROBID - A machine learning software for extracting information from scholarly documents It has been widely r ecognized that the context in w h i c h a q u e stion is placed in a survey i n t erview may affe c t the obtained responses (cf., Cantril, 1944; Schuman & Presser, 1981) . For example, placing a q uestion at different po s i t i o n s in the i n t e r view or questionnaire (e.g., A n drews & Withey, 1976; W i l kening & McGranahan, 1978) or, c h angi n g the order of two questions (e.g., Hyman & Sheatsley. 1950; Rugg & Cantril, 1944) In the present paper, we will address a specific context effect in a theoretical framework that is derived from r e s e a r c h on the activation of information (Wyer & Srull, 1986) and the logic of conversation (Grice, 1975) . Specifically, we will explore under which conditions preceding spec i f i c questions affect r e s ponses to subsequent general ones, and vice versa. Tur n e r (1984) , for e x a m ple, c o mpared answers of mar r i e d respondents who were asked about "happiness with life in general" when the same q u e s t i o n was p l a ced either after the more specific question about happiness with marriage or after respondents' evalua t i o n of their own financial coniitions. General happiness ratings were consistently high e r if they were assessed after the specific question about h a p p i n e s s with marriage rather than after the q u e s t i o n about one's f i n a n cial situation. The reason for this context effect is seen in the possibility that the parti c u l a r l y high ratings of h a p p i n e s s w i t h marriage may influence the general happi n e s s rating in the same direction. Turner (1984) reports a c o r r e l a t i o n of gamma = .75 for the two measures. There was no evidence, however, that the s p e c i fic marital happiness ques t i o n was influe n c e d by the c o n text in a similar way. The finding that the response to a more general target q u e s t i o n will be " a s s i m i l a t e d " toward the response to a more s p e c i f i c c o n text question is readily explained by psychological the o r i e s of cognitive accessibility (cf., Wyer & Srull, 1986) . Th e s e t h e o rists found that an ambiguous concept will be i n t e r p r e t e d in terms of the applicable information that is most a c c e s s i b l e to the respondent at the time. Prior use of the information, p a r t i cularly the recency and frequency of prior use (cf., Srull & Wyer, 1979 , were found to be the most important d e t e r m i nants of accessibility. A ccessibility of information may also influence a j u d g m e n t by systematically biasing the sample of information on w h i c h the judgment is based. This is p a r t i c u l a r l y true if a r e s p o n d e n t is faced with a general judgment task that does not s p e c i f y the relevant information (cf., Schwarz & Strack, 1985 Clark, 1985) and by Hilton and Slugoski (1986) , and their r e l e vance for survey situations has been noted by Tourangeau (1984) . In Schuman and Presser's (1981) terms, the specific r e f e r e n t "wife" is "subtracted" in the i n t e r p r e t a tion of the more general concept of "family". This is not the case for c o n v e r s a t i o n B. There, it is more likely that the answer The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. According -10to the second q u estion will include the wife's well-b e i n g because this i n formation has not yet been provided and is therefore a new and informative contribution to the conversation. It is important to note that the "given-new contract" operates The general qu e s t i o n asked r e s p ondents to i n d i c a t e on an 11-point scale "how happy" they were "with life in general". The endpoints were labelled "not so happy" and "extremely happy". The domain of happiness that was used as the specific q u e s t i o n was " d a t i n g " . (1985) found that "happiness with dating" was most closely related to general happiness in a student p o p u l a t i o n and therefore, a que s t i o n about dating hap p i n e s s was considered functionally equivalent wit h the specific q u e s t i o n about m a r i t a l happiness for the adult surveys. To be precise, the students were asked "how h appy are y ou wi t h yo u r dating" a n d'the response scale was identical to that of the general h a p p i n e s s question. Emmons and Diener The questions were asked under three experimental conditions. There was a control The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. -accessible when the general question was answered, it would not be u s e d . The degree of relatedness be t w e e n the answers to the specific and the general happiness question was assessed by the Pearson c o r r e lation between the ratings on the response scale. Results As can be seen from Table la , the c o r r e l a t i o n b e tween "general happiness" and "happiness wi t h dating" was very small (r = .16) From Table lb it can be seen that the mean ratings of n e i t h e r general nor specific happiness were s i g n i f i c a n t l y affected by the experimental manipulations. In addition, the p a ttern of s t a Results Table 2a shows that the pa t t e r n of correlation c o e f f i c i e n t s is Table 2 about here the same as for Experimen t 1. The correlation b e t w e e n "general happiness" and "frequency of dating" was very small and not d i f ferent from 0 (r = -.12) in the control condition w h e r e the s p e cific q u estion was placed after the more general one. The r e l a tionship between the two v a r iables increased significantly. (r = .66) , z = 5.04, p < .001, wh e n the ques t i o n about dating frequency pr e c e d e d the general happiness question. And again, when both questions were placed in the same conversational c o n text, the correlation was reduced (r = .15), z = 3.43, p < .0(51, and somewhat, but not si g n i f i c a n t l y higher than in the control conditions, z = 1.44. As in Experiment 1, the means were not affected by the experimental m a n i p u l a t i o n and the standard d e v i a tions cannot account for the p a t t e r n of correlations. This can be seen from Table 2b . D iscussion The results of the second experiment add further support to the proposed mechanism. They show a "part-whole-assimilation" eff e c t is obtained if the specific content is activated before the g e n e ral question. A nd they replicate the "part-whole-contrast" effect if both q u e s t i o n s are placed in the same c ommunication context. Further, these results rule out the pos s i b i l i t y that the p a r t i c u lar pattern of correlation s was merely caused by a differ e n t i a l use of the r esponse scale. Rather, the increased accessibility of the specific i n f o r m a t i o n and, under the appropriate condition, the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the content of the general question in the light of the g i v e n -n e w contract seem to be responsible for the e f f e c t s . Experiment 3 So far, the tendency not to use the content of a p r e c e d i n g q u e stion for the answer to a subse q u e n t q u e s t i o n but to "subtract" its referents in the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n (cf. Schunan & Presser, 1981) has only been applied to situations where two contents stand in a part-whole relationship. The same mechanisms, however, should not only apply if two con tents are h i e r a r c h i c a l l y rel a t e d but also if they are s e m a n t i c a l investigation, respondents were given the following two q u e stions: "How happy are you wit h your life as a whole"? and "Taken all things together, how satisfied are you with your l i f e " ? The questions had to be answered on 11-point scales where "1" was labeled "unhappy" or "unsatisfied" and 11 was labeled "happy" and "satisfied", respectively. For some respondents, a c o n v e r s a t i o n a l context was intro d u c e d by the following paragraph: "The following two questions refer to two aspects of your personal well-being: a) happiness with life, b) satisfaction with life." For o ther respondents, this paragraph was omitted. Results As can be seen from Table 3a , the d i f f e r e n c e between the cor- nal context. As in the two previous studies, the m ean judgments did not differ as a f u n c t i o n of the exp e r i m e n t a l m a n i p u l a t i o n and differences in the var i a n c e s cannot account for the p a t t e r n of correlations (see Table 3b ). Discussion Translated: The following two questions refer to two aspects of your personal well-being: a) happi n e s s wit h life, b) s a t i s f a c t i o n with life. Correlations b e t w e e n "General H a p p i n e s s " and "Happiness with D a t i n g " Correlations bet w e e n "General Happiness" and " Frequency of Dating" The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. Control condition Control condition -30 Table 3a : Correlations betw e e n " H a p p i n e s s " and "Satisfaction No significant m ean differences for both variables. Conversational the information used to answer it. The answer to the subsequent ge n e r a l question will therefore be based in part on the same information, r e s u l t i n g in similar responses.The highly accessible s p e c i f i c information, however, will not always be used. Most importantly, central principles of c o n v e r s a tion urge communicators to be informative and to avoid r e d u n d a n cy. Therefore, if both q u e s t i o n s are pe r c e i v e d as belonging t o g e ther, the p reviously activa t e d will be disregarded, which results in dissi m i l a r responses to the general question. The conditions undir which these'effects occur are i dentified and experim e n t a l in At t i t u d e Surveys: A s s i m i l a t i o n or Contrast? m a y result in d i f ferent m a r ginals and in d i f f e r e n t associations with other v a r i c o n cluded from a revie w of a large n u m b e r of ques t i o n n a i e c t , that they "occur in practice only u nder very special c i r cumstances and [that] it may be possible, t h r o u g h careful e x p e r i mentation, to identify what these are" (p.657). participants beh a v i n g in a cooperative manner. For Grice, the most important p r i n c i p l e of coop e r a t i o n is the attempt to be " i n f o r m a t i v e " . To be in f o rmative means that respondents try to answer a ques t i o n in such a way that they provide the i n f o r m a tion the q u estioner needs and that they avoid answers that would provide i n f o r m a t i o n the q u es t i o n e r does not want to have.To decide on the informati v e n e s s of a conversational c o n t r i b u tion, the respondent can draw upon the general nature of the c o n vers a t i o n a l situation. In a survey situation, for instance, the answer "in C h i c a g o " would be an informative response to the q u e stion "Where were you born?". In a survey, the answer "At home." or, "In a hospital." wou l d pro b a b l y not be informative. However, this could be an informative response to the same question w hen it is asked in a different social situation. The d e c i s i o n w hat would be an informative c o n tribution is i n e x tricably tied to the interpr e t a t i o n of the concept. That is, the r e spondent must identify the intended referent of a question. p o n d e n t ' s residence is semantically un d e t e r m i n e d with r e s p e c t to the aspect of "residence" about which information is sought. The concrete situation, however, in which the question is asked, allows further inferences. The Context Paradox in Attitude Surveys. , the respondent may infer the r e q uested in f o r m a tion by considering what is the p r e s u p p o s e d k n o wledge and wh a t is the focus of the q u e s t i o n content that deviates from the p r e s u p p o s e d knowledge (cf. Hilton 4 Slugoski, 1986; Levinson, 1983). It is then that the p r e s u p p o s e d k n o wledge can be "subtracted" (Schum an & Presser, 1981) to identify the r e f erents of the general question. A more concrete strategy b ased on this principle is the s o -c alled "given-new contract" (cf. Clark & Haviland, 1977). This contract suggests that respondents assume that questioners ask for information they do not yet possess, that is, information the r e s p o n d e n t has not yet given in the course of the conversation. Co n s i d e r the f o l lowing fragments of two n a t u r a l conversations w here two questions are asked in sequence. C o n v e r s a t i o n A: "How is your wife?", (answer), "And h o w is your family?". C o nversation B: "How is your work?", (answer), "And how is your family?". What does the questioner refer to by "your family"? More specifically, is "family" meant to include the r e s p o n d e n t ' s wife or onl y his children? In c o n v e r s a t i o n A, the "given-new contract" permits the inference that "family" should refer to the children because the information about the wife has already been given in the answer to the previous question. only if both questions are p e r c e i v e d as b e l o n g i n g together. In the course of a natural conversation, this is typically the case because the conversational context remains u n c hanged over some period of time and the c o n t r i b u t i o n s of the conversants relate to each other. In the present example, the c o ntinuity is further empha s i z e d by the word "and" as an introduction to the sec o n d ques t i o n . In a survey situation, however, this is not always the case. T h e refore, it depends on whether two or more questions are p e r c e i v e d as be l o n g i n g together or not. Sometimes, questio n n a i r e s are c o n structed so as to avoid such a perception. This is typically done by placing rela t e d questions at di f f e r e n t p o s i t i o n s of the q u e stionnaire or by inserting filler items. At other times, the relatedness of several ques t i o n s is made explicit by m e n t i o n i n g a common theme or topic as an i n t r o d u c t i o n to a set of questions. Most frequently, however, the relatedness of survey qu e s t i o n s remains u n c l e a r and the arising ambiguity must be resolved by the r e s p o n d e n t . It is our p r e d i c t i o n that the d i r e c t i o n of the influence of a specific q u e s t i o n on the answer to a more general one depends on w het h e r the two questions are p e r c e i v e d as b e l onging to the same conversational context. If the questions are perceived as u n r e l to the general question. On the basis of the above r e a soning it is possible to d e r i v e d i f ferential p r e d i c t i o n s about when to expect "part-whole contrast" and when to expect "part-whole assimilation" in a survey s i t u a tion. P art-whole assimila t i o n should occur when a specific q u e stion is asked before a more general one w i thout a co n v e r s a t io n a l context that pr e c l u d e s the use of this information. Part-whole contrast shou l d occur when a specific question is asked b e f o of questions is asked in a c o n v e r s a t i o n a l context, the possible referents of a more general q u e s t i o n should be different from the referent of the specific question. In Sch u man and Presser's (1981) terms, these r e f erents should be " s u b tracted" and the answer be b ased on the dist i n c t f e a t u r e s that allow the r espondent to provide new information. Figure l l u s t r a t i o n for this relationship. Figure 1 1 about here To test these predictions, it is n e c essary to vary both the a c t i vation of specific informat i o n and the c o n v e r s a t i o n a l context in which the q u e s tions are placed. This was a t t e m p t e d in an e x p e r i mental survey. E x p e r i m e n t 1 Method R e s pondents were 180 freshme n and sophomores of the Unive r s i t y of Illinois who agreed to answer a short " q u e s t i o n n a i r e on student issues" that c o n s i s t e d of 15 items. not ac t i v a t e d and therefore its a c c e s s i bility should not be increased w h e n the general ques t i o n is a n s wered. In a second condition, the spec i f i c happiness q u e s t i o n was asked before the general one. This was done by placing the d a t i n g que s t i o n at the end of the first page of the q u e s t i o n n a i r e and the general h a p p i n e s s q u e s t i o two questio n s were p l a c e d in a "c o n v e r s a t i o n a l c o n t e x t " . This was achieve d by int r o d u c i n g the two q u e s t i o n s in the following way: "Now, we w o u l d like to learn about two areas of life that may be important for people's o v e r a l l well-being: a) h a p piness with dating, b) ha p p i n e s s wi t h life in general." Subsequently, both happiness q u e s t i o n s were asked in the s p e c i fic-general order. On the basis of the prior reasoning, it wasassumed that alt h o u g h the specific i n f o rmation would be h i g h l y s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher than in the control condition, z = .56. This was p r e d i c t e d on the basis of the c o n v e r s a t i o n a l postulate to request and p r o v i d e new i n f o r m a t i o n . n d a r d deviations suggests that the o b s e r v e d d i f f e r e n c e s in c o r r e l a t i o n s are not due to differences in variances. D iscus s i o n This pattern of correlation c o e f f i c i e n t s suggests that aski n g a specific question before a more ge n e r a l one may increase the c o r rel a t i o n between the respondents' answer to the two questions. This result is explained by the theory of c o g nitive a c c e s s i b i l i t y which states that informat i o n that is a c t i v a t e d at a g i v e n point in time will become cogn i t i v e l y mo r e a c c e s s i b l e and therefore more likely to be used in a subse q u e n t judgment to which it is relevant. The present patt e r n of c o e f f i c i e n t s also suggests that the use of this i n f ormatio n may be i n f l u e n c e d by c o n versational rules that become effective in s p e c i f i c c o n v ersational contexts. bot h q u e stions w e r e measured on the same response scale. This raises the p o s s i b i l i t y that respo ndents may simply base their rating of the general q u e stion on their previous rating of the specific one. Under the activation condition, respondents may have been inclined to check the same value on the response scale. Under the c o n v e r s a t i o n c o n dition, the individual value on the first scale may have s e r v e d as an anchor for the second rating (cf., Ostr o m & Upshaw, 1968) and the m o t i v a t i o n to be informative may have r e s u l t e d only in a deviating use of the response scale and not in a d i f ferent i n t l i e d to the present content, if the evaluation of d a ting and of life in general is c o m m u n i c a t e d in a different answer format, a d e v i a t i n g use of the response scale cannot account for a possible communication effect. h a p p i n e s s with dating and therefore represents an e v aluative aspect of this life domain that can be ass e s s e d in an open-answer format. If the same pattern of correlations emerges from an experimental under the same experimental conditions as in E x p e r i ment 1. The only differe n c e was that the former question about h appiness with dating was repla c e d by a question that asked h o w often they normally go out on a date. The answer, the dating f r e q u e n c y per month, had to be w r i t t e n down in an open answer f o r mat . ly similar. An example w ou l d be the concepts of h a p piness and satisfaction. As i l l ustrated in Figu r e 2, happiness and s a t i s f a c tion Figure 2 about here share a large number of common features. It is therefore not s u r pri s i n g that judgments of h a p piness and s a t i s f a c t i o n are t y p i c a l ly h i ghly c orrelated (cf.r e l a t e d to af f e c t i v e d e t e r m i nants while s a t i s faction may be i n f l u e n c e d more by n o r m a t i v e and comparative consid e r a t i o n s (cf., A n d r e w s & McKennel, 1980). If respondents apply the g i v e n -n e w c o n t r a c t in order to ident i f y the referents of a question, they s h o u l w h i c h the r e s p o ndents were asked to report both their happiness and their s a t i s faction with life in general and in which these questions were either placed in the same co n versational context, or not.MethodRespondents were 40 students of the U niversity of Mann h e These findings show that the disc u s s e d m e c h a n i s m does not o n l y apply to survey situations where two h i e r a r c h i c a l l y related q u e stions are asked in d i f f e r e n t orders. The results of E x p e r i m e n informative by c o n c e n trating more on the d i s t i n c t i v e features of both concepts. and render the answer to the general q u e s t i o n more similar to the answer to the previous specific question. At the same time, the logic of c o n v e r s a t i o n may preclude the use of this information bec a u s e the respo n d e n t may presu p p o s e the spec i f i c knowledge in the questioner and attempt to add new information to what is alr e a d y given. As a consequence, the general answer will become the later one. Thus, introducing filler items, c h a n ging the r e sponse format, and similar m eans -often i n t r o d u c e d to reduce order effects -may decrease the l ikelihood of c o n trast effects. On the other hand, p l acing two questions back to backw ould like to learn about two areas of life that may be important for peo p l e ' s overall well-being: a) happiness wi t h dating, and b) happiness wi t h life in general. would like to learn about two areas of life that m a y be important for people's overall well-being: a) frequency of dating, and b) happiness w i t h life in general. n s l a t e d : How happy are y ou w i t h your life as a whole? n s l a t e d : Taken all things together, how sat i s f i e d are y o u wit h your life? folgenden Fragen b e z i e h e n sich auf zwei Aspekte Ihres per s ö n l i c h e n Wohlbefindens: a) das Lebensglück, b) die L e b e n s z ufriedenheit. differences for both variables. Figure 1 Table 1 1 about here Table 3 3 about here Table la : la Table lb lb : Means and sta n d a r d dev i a t i o n s Control condition Specific i n f o r m a t i o n A c t i v a t i o n + activated conversational cont e x Mean SD M ean SD Mean SD No significant mean differences for both variables. Table 2a : 2a Table 3b 3b : Means and standard deviations C onversational context yes no Mean SD Mean SD Happiness 8.40 1.64 8.63 1.83 S a tisfaction 7 .73 2.55 8.15 2.35 Andrews, F.M., & Withey, S.B. (1976) . Social indicators of w e l l being . New York: Plenum Press. Cantril, H. (1944) . Gau g i n g public o p i n i o n . Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Clark, H.H. (1985) . Measures of s e l f -r eported well-being F M Andrews A C Mckennel Their affective, cognitive, and other components Social Indicators R e s e a r c h 8 Schuessler Methoden der Analyse zeitbezogener Daten. Vortragsskripten der ZUMA-Arbei tstagung vom 25 Gerhard Arminger Willibald Nag1 F Karl 09. -05.10.79 Erika Brückner Hans-Peter Kirschner Rolf Porst Peter Prüfer ALLBUS Peter Schmidt Methodenbericht zum Manfred Küchler Verallgemeinerte Lineare Modelle in der empirischen Sozialforschung Glenn R. Carroll Dynamic analysis of discrete dependent variables: A didactic essay Manfred Küchler Zur Messung der Stabilität von Wählerpotentialen Manfred Küchler Zur Konstanz der Recallfrage Rolf Porst "ALLBUS 1982" -Systematische Variablenübersicht und erste Ansätze zu einer Kritik des Fragenprogramms Peter Ph. Mohler SAR -Simple AND Retrieval mit dem Siemens-EDT-Textmanipulationsprogramm Cornelia Krauth Vergleichsstudien zum Manfred Küchler Thomas P Wilson Don H Zimmerman Integration Von Qualitativen Und Quantitativen Forschungsansätzen Gerhard Arminger Horst Busse ALLBUS Bernd Wegener Two approaches to the analysis of judgments of prestige: Interindi vidual differences and the general scale Rolf Porst Synopse der ALLBUS-Variablen. Die Systematik des ALLBUS-Fragenprogramms und ihre inhaltliche Ausgestaltung Werner Hagstotz Hans-Peter Kirschner Rolf Porst im ALLBUS 1980 und ALLBUS 1982 Peter Prüfer Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS Mohler Qualshop (ZUMA-Arbeitstagung zum ' 'Datenmanagement bei qualitativen Erhebungsverfahren") -Sammlung von Arbeitspapieren und -berichten, Teil I + II Bernd Wegener Gibt es Sozialprestige? Manfred Küchler Peter Ph Konstruktion und Validität der Magnitude-Prestige-Skala Margrit Rexroth Erfahrungen mit einer Technik zur Bewertung von Interviewerverhalten Frank Faulbaum Ergebnisse der Methodenstudie zur internationalen Vergleichbarkeit von Einstellungsskalen in der Peter Prüfer Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften 1982 ALLBUS Dagmar Krebs Zur Konstruktion von Einstellungsskalen im interkulturellen Vergleich Hartmut Esser Können Befragte lügen? Zum Konzept des "wahren Wertes" im Rahmen der handTungstheoretisehen Erklärung von Situationseinflüssen bei der Befragung Bernd Wegener Prestige and Status as Function of Unit Size FraniT Faulbaum ' Very^-Soft Modeling: The Logical Specification and Analysis of Complex Process Explanations with Arbitrary Degrees of Underidentification and Variables of Arbitrary Aggregation and Measurement Levels Peter Prüfer Jürgen Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik Wohnquartiersbeschreibung Ein Instrument zur Bestimmung des sozialen Status von Zielhaushalten Gabriele Hippler, Hans-Jürgen Hippler Reducing Refusal Rates in the Case of Threatening Questions: The "Door-in-the-Face" Technique Hartmut Esser Befragtenverhalten als "rationales Handeln" -Zur Erklärung von Antwortverzerrungen in Interviews Rolf Porst, Peter Prüfer, Michael Wiedenbeck, Klaus Zeifang Methodenbericht zum Peter Kirschner Margrit Rexroth (Übersetzung: Dorothy Duncan) On the Use of the Interaction Coding Technique Hans Zur Kessler-Greenberg Zerlegung der Varianz der Meßdifferenz zwischen zwei Meßzeitpunkten einer Panel-Befragung Einige Ergebnisse von Vergleichstests zwischen den PC-und Mainframe-Versionen von SPSS und 86 Hans-Peter Kirschner Der Stichprobenplan zum Projekt 1SSP 1985 und seine Realisierung Günter Rothe Bootstrap in generalisierten linearen Modellen Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Tabellenband Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Abschlußbericht Michael Braun, Rolf Porst ALLBUS-Bibliographie (6. Fassung 87 Stand: 30.06. Barbara Erbslöh Michael Wiedenbeck Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS 1986" Norbert Schwarz, Julia Bienias What mediates the Impact of Response Alternatives on Behavioral Reports Brigitte Chassein The Range of Response Alternatives May Determine the Meaning of the Question: Further Evidence on Informative Functions of Response Alter natives Norbert Schwarz Fritz Strack Gesine Müller
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