The Effects of Metacognition in Survey Research
Experimental, Cross-Sectional, and Content-Analytic Evidence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6367522 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew D Sweitzer (0000-0002-2075-6177, The School of Communication at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA), Hillary C Shulman (The School of Communication at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 82 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 745-768 |
| Publication date | 2018-12-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Public Opinion Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-362X • E-ISSN: 1537-5331 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/poq/nfy034 |
| OpenAlex | W2895672101 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 28 |
Three studies examined the role of language difficulty in public opinion questions. Guided by feelings-as-information theory (FIT; Schwarz 2011), the first study presents an experiment (N = 1,018) in which the language difficulty of public opinion questions was varied. Findings suggest that language difficulty affected metacognitive experiences, which in turn affected reports of political interest, political efficacy, don't know responding, and ideological constraint. Study 2 (N = 1,817) presents cross-sectional evidence from publicly available data that also indicates question-language difficulty influences don't know responding. Given these findings, study 3 (N = 8,090) presents a content analysis that reveals significant systematic variability in language difficulty within polling questions across 10 polling firms in 2016. Contextualizing these findings within a FIT framework, we contend that variability in language difficulty differentially and systematically affects participants' metacognitive experiences while responding to public opinion questions. Given that metacognitive experiences affect survey response, language difficulty ought to be more carefully considered when drafting opinion questions. To this end, the data presented in these studies can be used to aid question construction by providing numeric guidelines, using widely available measures that contextualize the relative difficulty of survey language. It is also recommended that items assessing metacognitive experiences be included in survey research to account for variance in this measure. At a time when polling data are ubiquitous yet polling accuracy is being called into question, it is critical to identify sources of unmeasured error within polling data
Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Constraint (computer-aided design · Feeling · Metacognition · Political science · Politics · Polling · Public opinion · Statistics · Survey data collection · Variance (accounting · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Public Relations and Crisis Communication · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
What you expect is (not) what you get
Jargon as a barrier to effective science communication
What We Can Do and Cannot Do with Topic Modeling
Using metacognitive cues to amplify message content
Guy-Guessing Democracy
Privacy, Sensitive Questions, and Informed Consent
Predicting Vote Choice and Election Outcomes from Ballot Wording
The Effects of Jargon on Processing Fluency, Self-Perceptions, and Scientific Engagement
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity
Accessible Content and Accessibility Experiences
A new readability yardstick.
Uniting the Tribes of Fluency to Form a Metacognitive Nation
Gauging Public Opinion
Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questionnaires
Effect of Test-Taking Venue and Response Format on Political Knowledge Tests
In Search of House Effects
A Simple Theory of the Survey Response
You’ve Either Got It or You Don’t? The Stability of Political Interest over the Life Cycle
Question Understanding Aid (Quaid)
Cheating on Political Knowledge Questions in Online Surveys
Assessing the Scientific Knowledge of the General Public
Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questions
The Impact of Question and Respondent Characteristics on Comprehension and Mapping Difficulties
Public Misunderstanding of Political Facts
Framing analysis
Interest in political campaigns
The Implications of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence
Developing Valid Knowledge Scales
Self-reports
Cognitive processes underlying context effects in attitude measurement
Measuring Internal Political Efficacy in the 1988 National Election Study
Varying Metacognition Through Public Opinion Questions
| Citations per year | 1.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2023 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |