Experiments in filtering political opinions

Changes in the wording of core measures of political attitudes in the American National Election Studies have generated a good deal of controversy about artifactual sources of change in the U.S. electorate. This research, based on several field experiments and replications, investigates the effects of using or not using various types of opinion filter questions that have appeared in the SRC/CPS series over the years. The analysis shows that the use of a filter interacts significantly with a respondent's level of education and interest in politics, particularly the latter, in determining whether a respondent will offer an opinion on a given public policy issue. But the study also demonstrates that such an interaction occurs primarily when the question about interest in politics is askedafter, rather thanbefore, a set of political issue items. In interpreting these order-and-context effects the authors develop a self-perception model of how respondents infer their interest in politics from information that isavailable in memory about their own behavior in the survey interview.     

Reviews

Terry L. Thompson & Richard Sheldon, eds, Soviet Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Vera S. Dunham. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988, xiii+290 pp., £21.00.

Michael Rywkin, Soviet Society Today. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1989, xii+243 pp., $35.00 h/b, $12.50 p/b.

David Lane, Soviet Society Under Perestroika, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xv+401 pp., £40.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Catherine Merridale, Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in the Capital, 1925–32. London: Macmillan, 1990, xv+328 pp., £47.50.

Roger Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics under the New Economic Policy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, xi+453 pp., £48.00.

Francois Heisbourg, ed., The Strategic Implications of Change in the Soviet Union. London: Macmillan, 1990, vi+227pp., £40.00.

Neil Fodor, The Warsaw Treaty Organisation: a Political and Organizational Analysis. London: Macmillan, 1990, 235 pp., £40.00.

Gerald Segal, The Soviet Union and the Pacific. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xiii+236 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Philip S. Gillette & Willard C. Frank, Jr, eds, The Sources of Soviet Naval Conduct. Lexington, IN: Lexington Books, 1990, xvii+297 pp., $39.95.

Sylvia Woodby & Alfred B. Evans, Jr, eds, Restructuring Soviet Ideology: Gorbachev's New Thinking. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, 226 pp., £22.50.

Nikolai N. Petro, ed., Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, xi+244pp., £17.95 p/b.

David A. Dyker, Yugoslavia: Socialism, Development and Debt. London: Routledge, 1990, xi+201 pp., £30.00.

Agnes Heller & Ferenc Fehér, From Yalta to Glasnost. The Dismantling of Stalin's Empire. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, viii+288 pp., £35.00.

Elemer Hankiss, East European Alternatives. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, xiv+319 pp., £35.00.

George Blazyca & Ryszard Rapacki, eds, Poland into the 1990s: Economy and Society in Transition. London: Pinter, 1991, x+148 pp., £27.50.

Michael D. Kennedy, Professionals, Power and Solidarity in Poland: A Critical Sociology of Soviet‐Type Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiv+421 pp., £45.00, $59.50.

Graham Smith, ed., The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union. London: Longman, 1990, x+389 pp., £22.50 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

James Muckle, Portrait of Soviet School under Glasnost. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1990, ix+205 pp., £35.00.

Piers Beirne, ed., Revolution in Law: Contributions to the Development of Soviet Legal Theory, 1917–1938. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990, xiii+202 pp., $49.95.

Richard M. Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovka: Admiral Kolchak and the Allied Intervention in Siberia, 1918–20. London: Routledge, 1990, ix+193 pp., £30.00.

Vitaut Kipel & Zora Kipel, eds, Byelorussian Statehood—Reader and Bibliography. New York: Byelorussian Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1988, 398 pp.