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To Agree or Disagree
How a survey question is put can affect the responses received. This is important for how surveys are interpreted, and what inferences about the population (such as the general public) can be made.
This article looks at compound questions, acquiescence bias, and alternatives to agree-disagree question formats.
Double Barrels
On 24th September 2019, ComRes interviewed 1,027 British adults via an internet panel, about the Supreme Court ruling and other matters.
One question asked:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
“Parliament has had plenty of time to debate Brexit and we should just get on with leaving the EU.”
This is called a double-barrelled (or compound) question. There are two parts (“Parliament has had plenty of time…” and “we should just get on…”) but respondents can only agree, disagree or say they do not know.
What if you agree that Parliament has had “plenty” of debate time, but disagree that we should “just get on with” exiting the EU? In that situation, how a respondent answers is indeterminate.
The sample’s agreement with that statement was 60% — higher than a similar wording to one component: only 49% clicked they agreed that: “I don’t care how Brexit happens…
