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Asking comparative questions : the impact of the direction of comparison

WÄNKE, M. and Schwarz, N. and Noelle-Neumann, E.. (1995) Asking comparative questions : the impact of the direction of comparison. Public opinion quarterly, Vol. 59, H. 3. pp. 347-372.

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Official URL: http://edoc.unibas.ch/dok/A5250747

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Abstract

Questions assessing comparative judgments are often phrased as directed comparisons, that is, a stimulus A (subject) is to be compared to a stimulus B (referent); for example, "Is tennis more exciting than soccer or less exciting?" Tversky`s work on judgment of similarity indicated that comparing A to B may result in different similarity judgments than comparing B to A, The four studies reported in this article extend this work from judgments of similarity to evaluative judgments in general. The results demonstrate that the direction of comparison elicited by the wording of the question can have a strong impact on the obtained results. In some instances, a reversal in the direction of comparison (i.e., comparing A to B vs. B to A) resulted in a reversal of the ordinal ranking. Implications for question wording are discussed.
Faculties and Departments:07 Faculty of Psychology > Departement Psychologie > Ehemalige Einheiten Psychologie > Sozial- und Wirtschaftspsychologie (Wänke)
UniBasel Contributors:Wänke, Michaela
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISSN:0033-362X
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Last Modified:22 Mar 2012 14:25
Deposited On:22 Mar 2012 13:46

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