Attitudes, No Opinions, and Guesses |
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| Authors: | Jackson John E. |
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| Affiliation: | John E. Jackson is Professor of Political Science and of Business Administration, University of Michigan, and Research Scientist, Institute for Social Research was provided by a gift to the Program in American Institutions at the University of Michigan from Mr. A. Alfred Taubman. I wish to thank Henry Brady and Larry Bartels for their helpful suggestions and I owe a special debt to Elisabeth Gerber for her help and advice on the larger project of which this is a part. The ideas and arguments, and errors, in this article are the responsibility of the author and not those of the above organizations and individuals. The data are on file with the journal editor. |
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| Abstract: | This article presents a statistical model of the survey responsethat includes both a measure of the respondent's likely trueattitude and a measure of the probability that the respondentis uncertain about her or his attitude and is "guessing" ata response. This latter possibility introduces systematic measurementerror that may bias efforts to get unbiased estimates of attitudes.The model and the likely consequences of guessing are illustratedwith questions about Vietnam policy taken from the 1968, 1970,and 1972 National Election Studies (NES) surveys. The articleends with a discussion of the limitations and fragility of themodel. |
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