Jon A. Krosnick

Current Research Projects

Dr. Krosnick is currently involved in research in two principal areas: (1) the formation and change of political attitudes, and (2) the social and cognitive processes involved in responding to survey questionnaires. Below are descriptions of specific projects recently completed or currently underway in Dr. Krosnick's laboratory.

Survey research frequently uses multi-point scales to assess respondents' views.  These scales vary from two points (e.g., agree or disagree) to 101 points (e.g., the American National Election Study's thermometer-style ratings).  Scales can also vary in another regard: being bipolar (meaning the zero point is in the middle and the end points are opposites, such as extremely positive and extremely negative) or unipolar (meaning the zero point is at one end, as in “not at all important”).   However, different scale lengths may differ in reliability, so it is important to understand how the length of the scales affects the reliability of the responses.

To explore the relation between scale length and reliability, we conducted a meta-analysis of the results of many past studies.  Our data consist of results from 706 tests of reliability taken from thirty different between-subject studies.  We combined various measures of reliability and various sample sizes, controlling for these and other factors in determining the relation of scale length to reliability.

In general, we found that five- or seven-point scales produced the most reliable results.  Bipolar scales performed best with seven points, whereas unipolar scales performed best with five. We also found that offering a midpoint on a bipolar scale, indicating a neutral position, increased reliability.

Many scholars have proposed that citizen activism intended to influence government policy has one of its primary motivations in citizen dissatisfaction with current life circumstances.  Less prominent—and never directly tested—is the notion that the perceived threat of undesirable policy change could motivate political behaviors aimed at averting the threat.  In this research, we explore the relationship between threat perception and financial contributions to interest groups, using data from three representative sample surveys.  Because the financial contributions do not appear to fit any standard parametric distribution, we rely on non-parametric tests of differences in means and regressions bootstrapped standard errors to ensure that our findings are robust to assumptions about the distribution of financial contributions.

The research demonstrates that the threat of an undesired policy change did motivate financial contributions to interest groups.  There is also weak evidence that policy change threat motivated activism most when people attached great personal importance to a policy issue and when they had sufficient resources to permit participation.

A great deal of evidence is consistent with the news media priming hypothesis, but no past study has yet used survey data to directly test whether news media coverage of an issue increases the consistency between domain-specific evaluations and overall evaluations of the president via derivation, rationalization, or both.  The research reported here applied covariance structure modeling to longitudinal data from the 1990-1992 American National Election Study panel survey to gauge the impact of the surge in media coverage of the economy between 1991 and 1992 on derivation and rationalization of overall evaluations of President George H. W. Bush.  All analytic approaches yielded support for the same conclusion: increased media attention to the economy increased derivation and reduced rationalization, consistent with presumptions about the workings of news media priming.  The reduction in rationalization caused by media coverage of an issue most likely means that past studies have under-estimated the magnitude of priming.

Social psychologists have long been interested in the extent to which behavior is consistent with attitudes.  One approach to the study of this topic is to measure features of attitudes that relate to the strength of the attitudes. A great deal of research has shown that certain features of attitudes are related to the strength of the attitude-behavior relation.  Examples of such features are the personal importance of the attitude object and the certainty with which the attitude is held.  These features are referred to as Strength-Related Attitude Features (or SRAFs).

Our research focuses on a methodological issue related to the way in which the effects of SRAFs are determined.  Existing social psychological research on this topic has used one of two types of statistical analysis to gauge the effect of SRAFs on the attitude-behavior relation.  The first assumes that, to the extent that people engage in behavior related to an attitude object, it will be consistent with their attitude.  For example, it is assumed that if a person is opposed to legalized abortion and signs a petition on the issue, that person will sign a petition against legalized abortion and not for it.  Making this assumption, some studies have tested whether various SRAFs predict the number of attitude-expressive behaviors a person performs, ignoring the types of behaviors.

A second approach does not make any assumptions about valence matching between attitudes and behavior.  Studies that used this approach treated the direction of a person’s attitude as a variable in the analysis and tested whether various SRAFs interacted with a person’s attitude to predict behavior, taking into account the direction of that behavior.

Although both of these approaches are designed to test the same theoretical question, we have found that, in our data on attitudes about legalized abortion, the methods  yield very different results.  This might help to explain the fact that different studies of SRAF effects sometimes yielded contradictory results.  Therefore, attitude researchers should carefully choose their analytic method, because that choice can affect their results.

During the last two years, journalists and scholars have speculated about the possibility that rising gasoline prices have caused the decline in President Bush’s approval ratings.  But documenting causality has been difficult, because both variables have trended together, albeit in opposite directions, since 2002.  In order to separate correlation from causation, we created a monthly time series from 1976 to 2006 to place the relation between gas prices and approval in context of numerous presidential administrations.  Controlling for traditional economic, event, and scandal predictors of presidential approval, we implemented time series analysis to assess the historical relation between gas prices and approval and to test whether President George W. Bush’s approval has been impacted differentially by gas prices.  In addition, we tested whether data from different polling agencies produce different results and whether an average measure of approval is sufficient, collapsing across “houses”.  Preliminary evidence indicates that, when controlling for other factors, gas prices have not been a significant factor in determining presidential approval either in the past or during the current Bush presidency but that they were powerful determinants of approval during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, when the White House’s responsibility for this aspect of the economy was much more apparent to Americans.

Most explanations of the false consensus effect (FCE) presume that people exaggerate the extent to which others share their own attitudes, as the result of projection from self to others. Surprisingly, the accumulated evidence on this issue has rarely tested this proposition directly. We returned FCE research to its most basic level by examining the relation between the effect’s key variables. Study 1 manipulated respondents’ attitudes to test whether those attitudes shape their perceptions of others. Study 2 adopted procedures analogous to the Asch experimental paradigm to test whether perceptions of others’ attitudes influence one’s own attitude via conformity. Altering participants’ attitudes did not impact their perceptions of others’ attitudes, but manipulating participants’ perceptions of others’ attitudes did influence their own attitudes. These results challenge the widely held belief that people project their attitudes onto others and suggest that conformity drives the FCE.

In recent years, there has been much speculation about the possibility that pre-election polls gauging the status of a horserace between competing candidates may affect the behavior of voters on Election Day.  Specifically, some observers have asserted that polls showing a runaway victory may discourage voters from turning out, because they think their vote will not make a difference in the outcome. 

To test this idea, we are exploring the impact of public opinion poll results on political attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in the electoral context. We are developing and testing a causal model to explain how people update their assessments of the closeness of a race using information from polls and how they then use this closeness assessment to evaluate candidates and decide whether or not to vote.

To test our model, we conducted a survey experiment (administered by Harris Interactive with a sample of the general U.S. adult population) about a hypothetical presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2008.  Some respondents were told about a poll showing Clinton far ahead of Bush, other respondents were told about a poll showing the race as tight, and still other respondents were not told about any poll result.  Some respondents were asked about their perceptions of race closeness before being told about the poll results, and others were not asked this question. 

We explored three sets of questions:

First, we explored how people used the poll results to update their assessments of the closeness of a race, and what factors moderate this process. Previous studies have ignored this updating process – indeed, they did not even measure people’s prior beliefs before providing poll information.  We discovered that providing any poll result caused our survey respondents to update their closeness assessments in the direction of the poll result.  Interestingly, asking people about their prior beliefs before providing poll results reduced updating.

Second, we explored whether polls showing one candidate far ahead cause people to “jump on the bandwagon” and support the frontrunner. We went beyond the existing literature by analyzing the relation between “the bandwagon effect” and the updating process, the validity of various proposed causal mechanisms underlying the “bandwagon effect,” and the variables that moderate these causal processes. Among many findings, we observed that respondents were more likely to vote for Governor Bush when exposed to the tight poll result.

Third, we explored whether polls showing the race is lopsided reduced political participation by making citizens feel their actions will be inconsequential. We found that polls showing one candidate behind another had a demobilizingeffect; people exposed to polls showing Governor Bush trailing were less likely to vote, volunteer for his campaign, and contribute money.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is mandated by the U.S. Congress to provide a central clearinghouse for the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data on the science and engineering resources of the nation.  NSF partially fulfills this responsibility by annually conducting three large national surveys designed to collect uniform data that allows for a detailed analysis of the employment, educational, and demographic characteristics of those trained in science and engineering fields. 

To help NSF carry out this mission, we are conducting a series of experiments and analyses and provide technical expertise on three new efforts:  (1) Designing a starting salary question for the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED).  We have designed a survey experiment to determine which question type for salary provides the best quality of data without hindering the quality of other SED data. (2) Designing a question on the field of a person’s bachelor’s degree for inclusion in the American Community Survey (ACS), yielding a recommendation of the best wording for a field of degree question for the ACS.  The accuracy of the data yielded by different question designs is being tested in a survey experiment using a sample of Stanford University undergraduate alumni and their parents. (3) Conducting statistical analyses of the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to assess whether survey responses vary systematically depending on mode in which the data are collected, to profile post-docs in various fields, and to assess whether studying migration of post-docs from one field to another is possible given the existing data structure.  Additional cognitive work will identify optimal ways to ask survey questions of post-docs using focus groups.

In recent years, there has been wide-spread speculation about the possibility that response rates for national surveys have been low and are dropping due to increasing respondent reluctance to be interviewed.  This concern is accompanied by additional worry that low and dropping response rates are associated with decreased representativeness of survey samples and therefore reduced accuracy.

We initiated a project to attempt to better understand current response rates in the best and most visible surveys being done of nationally representative populations by telephone via Random Digit Dialing.  To this end, we approached the nation's leading news media polling organizations and the nation's leading survey research firms that do large-scale telephone surveys for agencies of the federal government.  All of the organizations we approached agreed to provide to us full disposition codes for recent national RDD telephone surveys, answers to a series of questions about how the surveys were conducted, and unweighted distributions of demographic variables for the respondents who completed interviews.

We found that response rates for the news media surveys were lower than those for the government contractors and that there was considerable variability in these response rates, with some very low and others quite high.  Observed response rates were correlated strongly with refusal rates and more weakly with contact rates.  Various aspects of survey procedure were associated with higher response rates, as would be expected, including longer field periods, shorter questionnaires, the payment of incentives, sending of advance letters, and more.

Most importantly, the unweighted demographics of the survey were compared to data on the nation gathered via the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (an authoritative benchmark).  The survey samples were remarkably similar to the nation in terms of age, race, gender, education, and income.  Higher response rate surveys manifested slightly less error than lower response rate surveys, but these differences were quite small.

In recent decades, survey research throughout the world has shifted from emphasizing in-person interviewing of block-listed samples to random digit dialing samples interviewed by telephone.  In this paper, we propose three hypotheses about how this shift may bring with it changes in the psychology of the survey response, involving survey satisficing, enhanced social desirability response bias, and compromised sample representativeness among the most socially vulnerable segments of populations.  We report tests of these hypotheses using data from three national mode experiments.  As expected, RDD-telephone samples were less representative of the population and more significantly under-represented the most socially vulnerable segments.  Furthermore, telephone respondents were more likely to satisfice (as evidenced by no-opinion responding, non-differentiation, acquiescence, and interview length), less cooperative and engaged in the interview, and more likely to express dissatisfaction with the length of the interview.  Telephone respondents were also more suspicious about the interview and more likely to present themselves in socially desirable ways than were face-to-face respondents.  These findings shed light on the nature of the survey response process, on the costs and benefits associated with particular survey modes, and on the nature of social interaction generally.

Many researchers have argued that citizens combine information about political candidates by simply subtracting the number of unfavorable beliefs they have about a candidate from the number of favorable beliefs they have about the candidate.  This describes a symmetric linear process.  It is symmetric because favorable and unfavorable beliefs have the same magnitude of impact on attitudes.  It is linear because as beliefs are added, they have the same amount of impact as earlier beliefs.  For example, five beliefs have five times as much impact is one belief.  In addition, according to a symmetric linear model (SLM), citizens who have no favorable or unfavorable beliefs about a candidate have neutral attitudes toward him or her.

Work in psychology adopting a behavioral adaptive perspective suggests a number of amendments to the SLM.  According to this perspective, human cognitive and behavioral processes develop because they facilitate survival and reproduction in a potentially hostile world.  Approaching any new object with favorable expectations is worthwhile, because it could be food or could facilitate acquisition of food.  However, vigilantly scanning for ally signs of danger all object might pose is also important, so that harmful objects call be avoided.  In the absence of any information about all object, then, attitudes toward it should be slightly positive.  And people should be especially attentive to the first information they receive about all object in order to form an accurate first impression.  Then if the object appears to pose not immediate threat, vigilance can taper off, so that the impact of each additional piece of information acquired about the object may diminish.  However, because one must vigilantly scan for signs of danger in all object, unfavorable information should have more impact than favorable information and vigilance to additional unfavorable information should not taper off to the same degree as attention to additional favorable information.

The model we propose, the asymmetric nonlinear model (ANM) is based on this approach and makes three predictions about attitudes about political candidates that differ from those of the SLM. First, citizens who leave no favorable or unfavorable beliefs about a candidate should have slightly positive attitudes toward him or her. Second, the information should have less impact as the amount of previously acquired information increases. And third, unfavorable information should have greater impact than favorable information and/or as the amount of previously acquired information increases, the impact of unfavorable information should decrease slower than the impact of favorable information.

We compared the SLM and the ANM using National Election Study (NES) data from presidential elections from 1972 to 1996.  Cross-sectional NES data showed that the ANM describes attitudes toward presidential candidates and political parties better than the SLM among respondents high and low in political involvement (measured using education, political knowledge, time of voting decision, and whether or not respondents voted).  Longitudinal NES data (collected before and after presidential elections between 1980 and 1996) showed that the ANM outperforms the SLM in describing the impact of beliefs on changes over time in attitudes toward presidential candidates.  And the ANM revealed that voter turnout is enhanced by a stronger preference for one preferred candidate, as long as at least one candidate is dislike, whereas the SLM failed to detect this effect.  Thus, the ANM appears to be superior to the SLM and the ANM has important implications for understanding the impact of election campaigns on citizens' preferences and actions.

A great deal of evidence suggests that survey respondents’ answers to closed-ended questions can be influenced by the order in which those choices are presented. However, the impact of order depends upon whether the choices are presented visually or orally. Under visual presentation conditions, people are inclined to select the first response options they encounter, and whereas under oral presentation conditions, people are inclined to select the choices they encounter last.

Given that these order effects appear quite consistently in surveys, we were interested in whether they would appear in real elections. When they enter voting booths, citizens encounter candidates’ names visually, either written on paper or written on a voting machine. Findings from survey research therefore suggest that people may be inclined to selected names toward the top of the list. To test this idea, we collected actual voting returns for the 1992 elections in three large counties in Ohio. Precincts are randomly assigned to receive different orders of candidate names, so we were able to analyze these data as if they resulted from an experiment. And indeed, people were inclined to vote for candidates whose names appeared toward the top of the ballot. These effects were much more common in races about which voters knew less and where partisan affiliations of the candidates were not listed on the ballot.

In 2001-2002, we conducted another test of these effects.  This time, we analyzed data from the 2000 general election for the entire state of Ohio, as well as the states of North Dakota and California.  In all three states, portions of the state (such as precincts or counties) were assigned to receive different orders of candidate names for all races we analyzed, so we were able to analyze these data as if they resulted from an experiment.  Again, name order effects were found in many of the races we analyzed.  A side effect of this research project was the discovery of how widely name order laws vary in the U.S.
 
Currently, we are in the process of two large data collection enterprises to improve our understanding of moderators of ballot order effects and to investigate the implication of different statistical approaches to testing hypotheses on ballot order effects. For the 2004 presidential race, we are focusing on the election in Ohio where ballot order was implemented on the precinct level. We are especially interested in the impact of voting method on effect strength and in irregularities in the implementation of rotation. More extensively, we are currently gathering elections results for all state-wide races in California from 1976 to 2006 to investigate the ballot order effect in over 50 different races.

A number of theories posit that people's attitudes become stronger as they get older, though they disagree on exactly how and when this might occur. Using data from national and regional surveys of adults, we have found that peoples political attitudes are especially open to change between ages 18-25, become more resistant to change immediately thereafter, and become more open to change at the end of the life-cycle. Other manifestations of attitude strength (e.g., the personal importance of attitudes, the confidence with which they are held, and the amount of knowledge people feel they have) also show this same surge and decline.

We have recently expanded this program of research in a number of ways.  First, we are exploring the generalizability of our results to other attitude domains.  Because our research, like virtually all of the investigations that have preceded it, has focussed on attitudes toward social and political issues, it is not clear whether the observed pattern of openness to attitude change is unique to social and political attitudes, or whether it describes age-related fluctuation in openness to change more generally.

Second, in addition to resistance to attitude change, we are exploring changes over the life span in some of the other defining qualities of attitude strength. Specifically, we are assessing changes over the life span in the degree to which attitudes (1) motivate and guide behavior and (2) direct information processing.

Finally, we are moving beyond a simple description of the relation between age and openness to attitude change to explore the causal underpinnings of this relation.  Specifically, we are testing several possible mediators of the relation between age and openness to change, including (1) changes in the size, composition, and frequency of contact with people's social networks, (2) changes in the frequency of role transitions and new social identifications, (3) changes in the nature of people's self concept, and (4) changes in cognitive functioning over the life span.

This program of research promises to enrich our understanding of the aging process and refine our appreciation of the adult life cycle.  Equally important, however, this research will contribute to a broader understanding of the social and psychological factors that determine susceptibility to attitude change in general.

A great deal of literature has shown that the news media have the ability to influence peoples political judgments. One particular media effects is agenda-setting, the notion that by paying attention to a particular national problem, the media can induce people to cite it as the most important national problem. A second media effect is priming, the idea that prolonged focus on a political issue can lead Americans to derive their overall evaluations of their President's job performance primarily from his handling of that issue.

We tested a widely-held assumption about the cognitive mechanism responsible for these effects: accessibility. In short, scholars have presumed that media attention to an issue makes attitudes and beliefs about that issue especially accessible, which leads them to select the issue as the country's most important and leads them to place weight on it when evaluating presidential performance. However, our laboratory studies clearly refuted these hypotheses by showing that although news media to a problem did increase the accessibility of relevant attitudes and knowledge, this increase in accessibility did not mediate either effect. Furthermore, agenda-setting did not mediate priming; that is, considering a problem to be the nations most important did not lead people to place greater weight on it when evaluating presidential performance. These findings challenge prevailing wisdom about these news media effects and encourage future research seeking to identifying the mechanisms that are in fact at work.

Research in linguistics suggests that conventions govern the order in which words are listed in sentences during everyday conversations.  We examine one such convention, that when listing two terms, one positive and the other negative, it is conventional to list the positive one first (e.g., like or dislike, for or against, support or oppose).  Specifically, we examine whether, when asking a question to gauge a person's attitude it is conventional to offer the positive or affirmative response choice first, and the negative response choice second.

We found that in everyday conversation it is conventional to offer the positive or affirmative response option first.  We have found that violating conversational conventions can sometimes reduce the data quality of responses to attitude questions.  When the two options are presented in the unconventional order, expectations are violated, people are surprised and distracted, so responses are made more slowly and with more error.  These effects are most apparent among respondents with the least cognitive skills, those with low GPA's or little formal education.

If there is a convention regarding the order in which response alternatives to such questions should be offered, one might presume that researchers would never violate it, so the problems caused by violating the convention would never occur.  However, there is a reason why researchers may violate the convention: response order effects.  A great deal of research has found that the order in which response choices are offered can influence the distribution of answers to closed-ended questions, sometimes advantaging alternatives presented first, and other times advantaging alternatives presented last.  In order to minimize the impact of such response order effects on response distributions, some questionnaire design experts have advised that response order be systematically rotated across respondents and at least on major survey firm, the Gallup Organization, routinely rotates response alternatives in order to estimate and control for response order effects.

In the past, the only apparent costs of such rotation have been that it increases the complexity and expense of the survey and introduces a source of systematic measurement error that must then be modeled in multivariate statistical analyses. However, our research suggests that presenting responses in the unconventional order makes respondents' cognitive tasks more difficult and reduces data quality. Consequently, the best solution may be to use only the conventional response order and take steps to eliminate response order effects by enhancing respondent's motivation to thoughtfully answer survey questions.

Attitude Importance and Attitude Accessibility
(with George Bizer)

Some scholars have argued that people use attitude accessibility as a heuristic with which to infer attitude importance, whereas others have argued that importance causes accessibility. Through a series of experiments, we have examined the relation between these constructs.  We failed to find an effect of accessibility on importance, whereas we did find effects of importance on accessibility.  These findings have helped us to better understand the relation between these two constructs and, perhaps more importantly, the underlying structure of attitude strength in general.  Specifically, it appears that importance and accessibility represent distinct constructs, and some apparent effects of importance may be mediated by accessibility.

In September, 1995, the international community of scientists who study the environment announced that they had come to a new consensus that global warming has been occurring as the result of human activities and that it will have very significant and costly consequences for the world unless some steps are taken to slow its development. This new consensus was reported to Americans via television news programs and in newspapers, but these two media carried slightly different messages. Whereas the television messages simply acknowledged the new scientific consensus, newspaper stories acknowledged that a minority of scientists disagreed with this position, and newspaper stories published in October and November, 1995, were especially skeptical.

In December, 1995, we conducted a telephone survey of a representative sample of Ohio adults to study the diffusion and impact of this information. And in short, we found that people formed their beliefs about whether or not global warming is real using both news media information and their own personal experiences. Television exposure did indeed encourage people to believe more in the existence of global warming, whereas newspaper exposure discouraged such a belief. But these media effects occurred only among people who were highly trusting of scientists to provide accurate information. People who were distrusting of scientists based their assessments of the existence of global warming on their own first-hand observations of changes in temperature and air pollution levels in recent years. Those who thought temperatures had gotten warmer and who thought pollution had increased were especially likely to believe in global warming.

We also examined the origins of people's attitudes toward global warming. Although most people thought global warming would be negative, some felt it would be neither positive nor negative, and a few actually thought it would be positive overall. And these attitudes were apparently driven by people's beliefs about impact on factors immediately relevant to people's daily lives: food, water, and shelter. People who believed global warming would hurt food and water supplies and would flood coastal living areas held negative attitudes. In contrast, global warming?Ns perceived impact on the beauty of natural scenery, on processes of plant and animal species extinction, on animal migration, and the like were inconsequential. Therefore, it appears that people's attitudes were driven by their beliefs about the immediate material interests of society.

This survey project also allowed us to explore some general issues in the attitude literature. For example, we examined whether four dimensions of attitude strength (attitude importance, prior thought, certainty, and perceived knowledge) are all reflections of a single underlying construct. And although a factor analysis of them yielded a single factor, they were correlated quite differently with demographic variables, psychological antecedents, and a measure of the magnitude of the false consensus effect. This evidence reinforces the general conclusion that attitude strength is not a unitary construct.

In September and October, 1997, we conducted a telephone survey or a representative sample of adults.  In December, 1997 through February, 1997, we re-interviewed a portion of those interviewed in September and October, as well as an additional representative sample of adults who had not previously been interviewed.  Between these two sets of interviews, the White House Conference on Global Climate Change occurred, and hundreds of stories on global warming were broadcast on television and radio, and published in newspapers and magazines across the country.  Our goal was to re-examine our findings from the Ohio survey with a national sample and to study how this media coverage changed public beliefs and attitudes about global warming.

On the surface, American public opinion about global warming did not seem to change in response to media coverage of the issues.  However, changes did occur when party identification was considered.  Strong Democrats moved in the direction of the message coming from the White House (i.e., that global warming would happen, that it would be bad, and that something should be done about it) while strong Republicans moved in the opposite direction.  So even though overall attitudes did not change, opinions polarized along party lines.  In addition to this partisan polarization, the media attention led the public to do more thinking about the issue of global warming and to be more certain of their opinions about global warming.  People were also able to report their opinion about global warming more quickly during the second set of interviews, one indicator that people's opinions about global warming were more crystallized after the media campaign.

Respondents' reports of behavioral frequencies have implications for important issues spanning the spectrum of unemployment rates, medical epidemiology, neighborhood and community evaluations, transport infrastructure, crime rates, consumer behavior, and government health resource allocation. Despite numerous assumptions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of questions asking about the past week vs. a typical week, there is a lack of empirical evidence comparing the performance of these two question forms. One previous study revealed no significant difference between past week and typical week measures, but those analyses treated variances in these two question forms as if they were the same. Using more appropriate analysis techniques, we compared the validity of "typical" week and "past" week reports using data from the 1989 National Election Pilot Study, in which respondents were randomly assigned to report TV news and newspaper exposure during either a typical week or the past week. The predictive validity of the measures was assessed using objective tests of current events and political knowledge, as well as self-report assessments of political knowledge. The typical week question form proved to be consistently superior, especially among the most educated respondents. We encourage further attempts to replicate the current findings in other domains of behavioral frequencies.

Satisficing theory suggests that respondents may sometimes choose the first satisfactory response alternative they consider, rather than carefully considering all the response alternatives.  This theory predicts that respondents are most likely to satisfice when they are unable and/or unmotivated to think carefully about a question and when the question is difficult to answer.  When questions are presented orally, respondents typically cannot start thinking about the response alternatives until all have been read, so they more fully process response alternatives read last.  This process typically leads to recency effects when questions are presented orally.  In a meta-analysis of 212 dichotomous response order experiments in telephone surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization between 1995 and 1998, we are testing the impact of respondents ability, respondent motivation, and task difficulty on the likelihood and magnitudes of response order effects.  In addition, we are exploring a new hypothesis, that the order in which response options are considered can be affected by the linguistic structure of the question.

For years, researchers have been interested in what determines citizens?N decisions about which candidates to vote for in presidential elections.  These decisions have intrigued political scientists and social psychologists alike, and their research has led to the discovery of numerous elements that seem to play causal roles: party identification, performance of the incumbent, the health of the national economy, candidates?N stances on important national issues, perceptions of candidates?N personalities, and more.  Although correlations of various political attitudes and beliefs with candidate preferences are well-documented and assumed to influence impact on candidate preferences, social psychology (and cognitive consistency theories in particular) suggests a very different interpretation of these correlations: rationalization.  

We are investigating the theory that people form candidate preferences and thereafter change related political attitudes and beliefs so they become more consistent with their candidate choice.  Using all available National Election Study data, we have found evidence of pervasive rationalization in every instance possible to analyze.  We have found evidence of rationalization in ideological self-identifications, party identification, and stances on abortion and other national policy issues. We are now attempting to employ panel data to yield strong evidence about the causes of candidate choices, eliminating the contaminating influence of rationalization.

Survey researchers are generally mindful that balancing the wording of a question can alter the distributions of answers obtained. However, researchers who choose to use balanced questions can choose among multiple ways to achieve this aim. A fully balanced question involves fully restating the competing point of view, whereas a minimally balanced question simply uses the words or not or a phrase of that sort to briefly acknowledge a second viewpoint.

In two studies using national sample survey data, we compared the distributions and concurrent validity of responses across fully and minimally balanced questions. We also explored whether the impact of full balancing varied with respondent education, a variable that has been shown in prior studies to regulate the magnitude of various response effects. Across these studies, minimally balanced and fully balanced questions resulted in similar distributions of responses of equivalent validity, and this pattern did not vary with respondent education.

A third study examined the distributions of responses to factual knowledge questions using a sample of college undergraduates. Participants provided responses to either fully balanced or minimally balanced questions that were worded either in a conversationally conventional way (e.g., u?Lgreater or less thani^) or in a non-conventional way (e.g., u?Lless than or greater thani^).  The latter approach has been shown in other research to disrupt processing and reduce data quality, and we found here that the unconventional question wording yielded fewer correct answers from respondents.  When the unconventional wording was used, full balancing enhanced answer accuracy over what was obtained with minimal balancing.  But when a question is worded in a way consistent with conversational conventions, full balancing did not offer an advantage over minimal balancing in terms of response accuracy. 

Therefore, when questions are worded in conversationally conventional ways, the practical benefits of minimal balancing give that approach a relative advantage over full balancing.  However, if researchers were inclined to violate conversational conventions, fully balanced items may offer an advantage.

In the social psychological literature on attitude change, there has been an ongoing debate regarding how being personally involved in an issue impacts attitude change.  One perspective has been that involvement in an issue can be separated into two types of involvement: one based on self-interest and one based on value-relevance.  It was hypothesized that these two constructs would have separate effects on attitude change.  The other perspective is that involvement need not be separated into its more specific components because they will all lead to the same effect on attitude change.  No previous studies have provided an adequate framework from which to test these hypotheses.

An experimental framework was created in which to test the effects of self-interest and value-relevance on attitude change.  In the study, participants were manipulated to connect the issue of comprehensive graduation exams to either their self-interest or their values before they read either a strong or weak counter-attitudinal message regarding the issue, which consistent of appeals to both self-interest and values. 

The findings provide preliminary support for the idea that value-relevance interacts with message strength in the same manner as self-interest to affect attitude change.  In addition, high value-relevance also led to a greater resistance to attitude change than high self-interest when messages were weak, indicating that separate effects may also be plausible.

Currently, this study is being re-run with new self-interest and value-relevance manipulations as well as more clear definitions of self-interest and values. The results of this study will hopefully elucidate the earlier findings while providing greater insight on how involvement is best conceptualized as a variable in attitude change. 

During the last two decades, numerous surveys have been done to assess the monetary value that people place on the existence of various natural resources that have been damaged by human actions. For example, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker damaged ecosystems in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and surveys later sought to ascertain the value of those ecosystems for litigation. This sort of survey research has been called "contingent valuation".

A heated debate has been raging in the contingent valuation literature about how best to measure these monetary values. Some scholars argue that it is best to ask respondents referendum questions about whether they would be willing to pay a specified amount of money to prevent the same sort of damage from happening again in the future. Different respondents are randomly assigned to be asked about different amounts, and everyone's answers are used to assess the public's total willingness to pay. Other scholars argue that this approach may bias estimates of willingness to pay by anchoring thinking on the particular values offered. Therefore, these scholars suggest, it is preferable to ask direct questions about how much respondents would be willing to pay.

We initiated a project assessing the impact of anchoring on responses to these sorts of referendum questions. By experimentally comparing referendum questions to direct questions, we find that they do yield significantly different results. On average, the referendum questions yielded higher estimates of mean maximum willingness to pay than did direct questions.  However, the referendum questions and direct questions both manifested equivalently high levels of correlational validity via their theoretically sensible relations with an array of predictors.

Thousands of experimental studies have compared the effectiveness of questionnaire items written in different ways, yet these studies have never been brought together in a single review. We are now completing a book doing just that. We will draw upon this literature to recommend to people when to use open-ended vs. closed-ended questions, when to use rating scales vs. ranking tasks, how many points to put on rating scales and how to label the points verbally, how the order of response choices influences answers, whether to offer "don?Nt know" response options, how to word and order questions, whether to ask people to recall their attitudes at prior times, and whether to ask people to explain the causes of their thinking and actions. The result of our efforts is an empirically-validated set of recommendations about how to maximize the reliability and validity of data collected via questionnaires.

A great deal of research has explored the psychological origins of citizen activism intended to influence government policy in democratic societies.  Although various scholars have speculated that one motivator of such behavior is the perception of a credible threat of policy change in an undesirable direction, this hypothesis has never been directly tested using data on individual citizens and their perceptions.  Our research tests the hypothesis that policy change threat leads to activism.  More specifically, we are testing the effect of a citizen?Ns belief that a piece of legislation that he/she does not want to see passed i` whether for health or safety reasons, or just personal preference i` might actually become law.

We suspect that such threats will be more likely to inspire activism among some individuals than others, one determining factor being the personal importance of the issue to the individual. To a citizen who attaches a great deal of importance to an issue, an undesirable policy change would be personally devastating.  But no matter how much significance people attach to an issue, they cannot be immediately and vigorously responsive to a threat unless they have the available resources in terms of time and/or money.  Resources have, of course, been recognized as very important determinants of activism.  But in all past research, resources have been statistically treated as having direct effects on activism, as if simply having more money or more free time, in and of themselves, directly inspire political action.  Although this research implies that the effect of resources on activism depends on certain conditions, it is surprising that this hypothesis has never been explicitly tested, which we have now done.

We have conducted a series of studies to test the following hypotheses: 1) that policy change threat leads to political activism; 2) that the effect of policy change threat on activism is moderated by personal importance; and 3) that the effect of policy change threat on activism is moderated by income.  These studies have employed a variety of methods, including nationally representative telephone surveys and a field experiment, and have examined threat in a variety of context, including attitudes towards the environment, abortion, and presidential candidates.

The results of these studies have been quite compelling i` in all cases, the threat of an undesirable policy change motivated activism aimed at preventing the change.  In addition, we have found that personal importance exacerbates the effect of threat on activism, as does income, when the type of activism examined is financial contributions (an act for which income is a necessary resource).   We are currently conducting a nationally representative telephone survey experiment and a laboratory experiment to extend our findings and show additional causal evidence of the effect of threat on activism.

Satisficing theory proposes a number of survey features and individual differences that are likely to make satisficing more or less likely.  For example, individuals who have not given much thought to an issue are theorized to be especially likely to satisfice; similarly, individuals lower in education or who don't like to think may tend to satisfice.  On the other hand, individuals who are specifically instructed to try to answer questions carefully and accurately may more likely to provide optimal answers.  We are currently subjecting these proposed moderators of satisficing to experimental tests, using both student and national samples.  In particular, these experiments will shed light on the ways in which various interpersonal and situational factors interact to influence survey responding.

We are currently assisting in the development of several national-level survey questionnaires for a NASA program designed to track changes in aviation safety in the United States. This project has applied research on the relationship between the organization of events in memory and recall of those memories to survey instrument design. More specifically, this research has used focus groups and individual interviews with pilots and air traffic controllers to identify the safety-related issues that inform the content of the questionnaire as well as preliminary information on the organization of related events, identification of a key cognitive organization scheme used by pilots in their memories of safety-related events, assessments of pilots’ abilities to accurately recall events over time, and an experimental demonstration of the effectiveness of using memory cues matching the pilots’ organization scheme to enhance accurate recall for safety-related events.

We also investigated the impact of survey mode on recall accuracy. Comparing telephone interviews to self-administered mail questionnaires, we found telephone interviews to be more accurate in measuring event frequencies, partly because telephone interviewers paced respondents slowly, whereas respondents to a self-administered questionnaire rushed through the questions.

Surveys that forecast election outcomes have implications for campaign strategies, financial contributions, political analysis in the mass media and academia, as well as actual electoral turnout. However, techniques for improving the accuracy of election forecasting in polling organizations are often proprietary and not amenable to comparative evaluation. With the intention of moving the field toward viewing these techniques as an appropriate terrain for scientific investigation, we investigated how election forecasting would be affected by (a) elimination of respondents who are not likely to vote, (b) allocation of undecided respondents to candidates or referendum positions, (c) weighting of samples for representativeness, (d) addition of random responses, (e) controlling for candidate name order effects. 

Using data from the 1997-1999 Buckeye State Polls collected by the Center for Survey Research at The Ohio State University, we found that (a) although better forecasting is achieved when using a combination of filters than separate filters to eliminate non-voters, there is a limit on the number of filters that should be applied. Filtering down to 50% of the samples is optimal for forecasting candidate races, while forecasting of referendum benefit from using only 10-20% of the original samples. (b) Random allocation of undecided respondents to candidates or issue positions improved the forecasting potential of the pre-election surveys for both candidate races and referenda. (c) Although weighting of the unfiltered samples did not consistently improve forecasting, substantial improvement was attained on referenda forecasting by weighting the samples after the optimal number of filters have been applied. (d) Addition of random responses did not improve forecasting. (e) Candidate name order effects emerged on the surveys, with recency effects most pronounced for less publicized races and among respondents with less education. Based on these results, we were able to provide a set of recommendations on how to improve election forecasting using empirically-validated techniques.

Some attitudes are durable and impactful, whereas others are weak and inconsequential. Over the last few decades, researchers have identified roughly a dozen attributes of attitudes that differentiate the strong from the weak. However, considerable controversy remains regarding the relations among these attributes. Some scholars have suggested that the various strength-related attributes reflect a small number of latent constructs, whereas others have suggested that each is a distinct construct in its own right. We review this ongoing controversy, and we then review a diverse set of recent studies that provide new evidence in support of the latter perspective. We consider the implications of our findings for the conceptualization of attitude strength and for the methods by which it is studied.

Attitude measurement is pervasive. Social psychologists routinely measure attitudes when studying their causes (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Tesser, Whitaker, Martin, & Ward, 1998; Zajonc, 1968), how they change (e.g., Festinger, 1957; Howland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and their impact on cognition and behavior (e.g., Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). Attitude measurement is also frequently done by political scientists, sociologists, economist, and other academics. Commercial market researchers are constantly engaged in measuring attitudes toward real and imagined consumer products and services. Beginning in the 1990s, all agencies of the U.S. federal government initiated surveys to measure attitudes toward the services they provided. And the news media regularly conduct and report surveys assessing public attitudes toward a wide range of objects. One of the most consequential examples is the routine measurement of Americans' approval of their president.

To gauge people's attitudes, researchers have used a wide variety of measurement techniques. These techniques have varied across history, and they vary across professions today. This variation is due both to varying philosophies of optimal measurement and varying availability of resources that limit assessment procedures. When attitude measurement was first formalized, the pioneering scholars presumed that an attitude could be accurately assessed only using a large set of questions that were selected via an elaborate procedure (e.g., Likert, 1932; Thurstone, 1928). But today, attitudes are most often assessed using single questions with relatively simple wordings and structures, and the variability of the approaches is striking, suggesting that there is not necessarily one optimal way to achieve the goal of accurate measurement.

Recently, however, scholars have begun to recognize that the accumulating literature points to clear advantages and disadvantages of various assessment approaches, so there may in fact be ways to optimize measurement by making good choices among the available tools. Furthermore, some challenging puzzles have appeared in the literature on attitude measurement that are stimulating a reevaluation of widely shared presumptions. This makes the present a particularly exciting time for reconsidering the full range of issues relevant to attitude measurement.

In this chapter, we offer a review of issues and literatures of use to researchers interested in assessing attitudes. We begin by considering the definition of attitudes, because no measurement procedure can be designed until the construct of interest has been specified. We review a range of different definitions that have been adopted throughout the history of social psychology but settle in on one that we believe captures the core essence of the notion of attitudes and that we use to shape our discussions throughout.

Because attitudes, like all psychological constructs, are latent, we cannot observe them directly. So all attitude measurement depends on those attitudes being revealed in overt responses, either verbal or nonverbal. We, therefore, turn next to outlining the processes by which we believe attitudes are expressed, so we can harness those processes to accurately gauge the construct. Finally, we outline the criteria for optimal measurement that we use throughout the rest of the chapter: reliability, validity, and generalizability.

Having thus set the stage, we turn to describing and evaluating various techniques for measuring attitudes, beginning with direct self-reports (which overtly ask participants to describe their attitudes). We outline many ways by which a researcher can design direct self-report measures well and less well. Next, we acknowledge the limits of such direct self-reports. A range of alternative assessment techniques, some old and others very new, have been developed to deal with these limitations, and we review those techniques next.

Social psychologists have long recognized that every method of scientific inquiry is subject to limitations and that choosing among research methods inherently involves trade-offs. With the control of a laboratory experiment, for example, comes an artificiality that raises questions about the generalizability of results. And yet the naturalness of a field study or an observational study can jeopardize the validity of causal inferences. The inevitability of such limitations has led many methodologists to advocate the use of multiple methods and to insist that substantive conclusions can be most confidently derived by triangulating across measures and methods that have nonoverlapping strengths and weaknesses (see, e.g., Brewer, this volume, Ch. 1; Campbell & Fiske, 1959; Campbell & Stanley, 1963; Cook & Campbell, 1969; Crano & Brewer, 1986; E. Smith, this volume, Ch. 2).

This chapter describes a research methodology that we believe has much to offer social psychologies interested in a multimethod approach: survey research. Survey research is a specific type of field study that involves the collection of data from a sample of elements (e.g., adult women) drawn from a well-defined population (e.g., al adult women living in the United States ) through the use of a questionnaire (for more lengthy discussions, see Babbie, 1990; Fowler, 1988; Lavrakas, 1993; Weisberg, Krosnick, & Bowen, 1996). We begin the chapter by suggesting why survey research may be valuable to social psychologists and then outline the utility of various study designs. Next, we review the basics of survey sampling and questionnaire design. Finally, we describe procedures for pretesting questionnaires and for data collection.

Partisanship and Attitudes about Global Warming
(with Ariel Malka)

Since the 1990s, the volume of information about global warming (GW) transmitted to the general public has increased dramatically.  This increase in coverage was initially sparked by the emergence of a scientific consensus that human-caused GW has, in fact, been occurring and that it may have devastating consequences (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1995).  Despite the emergence of this consensus, the messages about GW conveyed to the general public during the last decade have often been mixed.  Much mainstream news coverage has suggested that GW is real, human-caused, potentially catastrophic, and something that the federal government should deal with, but a good deal of coverage has also presented various more skeptical views as well.  Perhaps driven by a desire to appear politically impartial and/or to cover all viewpoints fully, news media outlets have often quoted individuals conveying that human-caused GW is not happening, or that the government should not take aggressive action to deal with GW.

In this research, we are examining the impact of this information flow on Americans attitudes and beliefs about GW.  In one study, we compared survey responses from a representative American sample in 1998 to those of another representative American sample collected in 2007.  During those years, Americans became more likely to A) hold basic beliefs about GW that are congruent with the scientific consensus, B) favor greater federal government action to deal with GW, C) perceive agreement among scientists that GW has been happening, and D) possess stronger attitudes and beliefs about GW.  However, these increases only happened among Democrats and Non-Partisans but did not occur among Republicans.  Consequently, Republicans and Democrats are now more different from one another than they were in the late 1990s.

In another study, we examined the relation between knowledge about GW and concern about this issue.  Information campaigns about GW are often predicated on the assumption that learning more about GW will lead people to become more concerned about it.  Using data from three surveys of nationally representative samples of American adults, we found that the relation between knowledge and concern about GW is more complex than this view suggests.  Among people who trust scientists to provide reliable information about the environment and among Democrats and Non-Partisans, increased knowledge has been associated with increased concern.  But among people who are skeptical about scientists and among Republicans, more knowledge was generally not associated with greater concern.  The association of knowledge with concern among Democrats and Non-Partisans who trust scientists was mediated by perceptions of consensus among scientists about GW’s existence and by perceptions that humans are a principal cause of GW.  Thus, when studying the relation of knowledge and concern, it is important to take into account the content of the information that different types of people acquire and choose to rely upon. 

An Exploration of Forces Driving Vote Choices in the 2008 American Presidential Election
(with Omair Akhtar, Josh Pasek, Keith Payne, Trevor Tompson, and Yphtach Lelkes)

At the beginning of September, 2008, Barack Obama was ahead of John McCain in the polls, but by a much smaller margin than many forecasting models predicted. In conjunction with the Associated Press, Yahoo! News, and the Stanford University Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, we investigated potential reasons that might have explained this discrepancy by regressing vote choice at that time and actual voting behavior on election day on a series of predictors, including: racism, beliefs about the candidates' competence in governing, military experience, integrity, elitism, and issue priorities, their familiarity to voters, voter preference for divided government, voter perception that Obama is a Muslim, Obama's relationship with Reverend Wright, evaluations of the first ladies, resentment maintained by Hilary Clinton supporters, perceptions of the economy, Presidential approval ratings, party identification, and ideology. 

A variety of racism measures were used, including symbolic racism, racial resentment, stereotypes of Blacks' personalities, affect toward Blacks and Whites, other explicit measures, and the Affect Misattribution Procedure, a measurement tool developed by social psychologists for measuring prejudice without explicitly asking respondents. This procedure asks respondents to evaluate various Chinese ideographs and measures the spillover of the affect inspired by nearly-subliminal exposures of faces of Black and white faces preceding them.

We identified a wide range of factors that explained vote choices as well as decisions about whether to vote or abstain. 

Moderators of Ballot Name Order Effects: The Role of Information and Ambivalence
(with Nuri Kim)

Much evidence suggests that candidate name order effects occur in elections, but we know surprisingly little about the psychological mechanisms(s) responsible for these effects. A handful of past studies have identified conditions in which the effect is more or less pronounced, generally relating to either the characteristics of the election (e.g., type of race) or individual attributes (e.g., education). Adding to such external and dispositional contingencies, the current study focuses on the cognitive processes that lay beneath the observed effect. Two main moderators are examined – the amount of information voters have about the candidates, and the ambivalence voters feel toward the candidates.  An experiment embedded in a national survey was done to test both explanations.

Unmotivated Anonymity

(with Yphtach Lelkes, David Marx, Charles Judd, and Bernadette Park)

Public opinion researchers often assume that promising anonymity to survey respondents minimizes social desirability response bias. Anonymity may indeed encourage reporting of socially inappropriate attitudes and behaviors and may discourage over-stating socially appropriate attitudes and behaviors, but past studies have generally not tested whether anonymity makes reports more accurate. Two experimental studies demonstrated that making participants anonymous when answering self-administered paper and pencil questionnaires led them to report fewer socially admirable opinions and behaviors and more socially embarrassing opinions and behaviors.  But anonymity also induced more survey satisficing and lower accuracy of reports of factual matters.  These studies suggest that anonymity may not be a costless method for minimizing social desirability response bias.

The Impact of Interviewer Race and Gender on Survey Results:  The Case of Pre-Election Polls

(with Mario Callegaro, Robert P. Daves, Femke De Keulenaer, Daniel Schneider, and Yphtach Lelkes)

Most discussions of bias due to the race and gender of a survey interviewer center on the quality and veridicality of the responses given by the survey respondent. That is, respondents are thought to bow to social desirability pressures and give answers that they believe will be less offensive or more appealing to the interviewer given his/her race or gender. However, an often overlooked but potentially damaging source of error involves interviewer recruitment differences due to race and gender.  That is, interviewers of some races or genders may be especially effective at recruiting respondents with matching races or genders, thereby inducing sample composition bias.

Hierarchical regression models were used to disentangle various sources of interviewer error in a survey conducted in Minneapolis during the 2001 mayoral election, when a black female incumbent was challenged by a white male. Stated vote intention and favorability toward the incumbent increased when the interviewer was a black female. Furthermore, survey recruitment also varied by the race and gender of the incumbent as expected.

Thus, this study indicates that interviewer race and gender may introduce bias in two different steps: recruitment and response generation.

Current and Former Research Team Members

Graduate Students

Omair Akhtar, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Sowmya Anand (formerly Sowmya Narayan), Coordinator of Research Programs, Survey Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

James Ashenhurst

Matthew K. Berent, Researcher, American National Election Studies, Stanford University

Andrew L. Betz, GTE Laboratories, Waltham, Massachusetts

George Bizer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Union College

David S. Boninger, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Laura A. Brannon, Associate Professor of Psychology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas

John Bullock, Assistant Professor, Yale University (http://www.yale.edu/polisci/people/jbullock.html)

Brent Bannon, Boston Consulting

Christopher Bryan, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Catherine G. Carnot, Nationwide Insurance Company, Columbus, Ohio

LinChiat Chang, Kantar Health, San Francisco, California

I-Chant Chiang, Assistant Professor, Aberystwyth University

Yao Chia Chuang, Taiwan National University, Taipei, Taiwan

Curtiss Cobb, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Philip J. Cornet

Matthew Courser, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Columbus, Ohio

Irving J. Culpepper

Charles Ellis, Vice President, Marketing Sciences, Ipsos Marketing, Cincinnati, Ohio

Leandre R. Fabrigar, Professor of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Phil Garland, Survey Sampling International

Lori Gauthier, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Jennifer Garst, Research Associate, Department of Communication, University of Maryland

Melanie Green, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina

Wendy Gross, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Hahrie C. Han, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College

Scott Hartl

Allyson Holbrook, Associate Professor, Departments of Public Administration and Psychology, The University of Illinois at Chicago

Nuri Kim, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Brandon Kopp, Ph.D. Candidate, Ohio State University

Katherine A. Kost

Stephanie Lampron, Deputy Director, National Evaluation and Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Children and Youth Who Are Neglected, Delinquent, or At-Risk, American Institutes for Research, Washington, DC.

Yph Lelkes, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Fan Li, Bell Labs, New Jersey

Laura Lowe, NFO Ad: Impact, San Francisco, California

Ann R. Lynn, Associate Professor, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY

Joanne M. Miller, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Neil Malhotra, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Lise Marken, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Ken Mulligan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois

Josh Pasek, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Alison Pfent, Ph.D. Candidate, Ohio State University

Michael Sargent, Associate Professor of Psychology, Bates College

Daniel Schneider, Boston Consulting

Amanda Scott, The Strategy Team, Columbus, Ohio

Constantine Sedikides, Professor of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Eric Shaeffer, Ph.D. Candidate, Ohio State University

Michael Silver, Government Accountability Office, Washington, DC

Wendy Smith, The Gallup Organization, Princeton, New Jersey

Alex Tahk, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Trevor Thompson, The Associated Press, Washington, D.C.

Brian Uldall, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Hilo, Hawaii

Penny S. Visser, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago

Rui Wang, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

David Yeager, Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University

Nick Yee, Research Scientist, Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Postdoctoral Fellows

Sowmya Anand
LinChiat Chang
Anna Blom Kemdal
Ari Malka
Joshua Rabinowitz

Research Staff

Ari Malka
Ana Villar
Matthew DeBell
Jonathan Cowden

Publications

Books

Weisberg, H., Krosnick, J. A., & Bowen, B. (1989). Introduction to Survey Research and Data Analysis. Chicago: Scott, Foresman.

Krosnick, J. A. (Ed.). (1990). Thinking about politics: Comparisons of experts and novices. New York: Guilford Press (Book version of a special issue of Social Cognition, Volume 8, Number 1, 1990).

Petty, R. E., & Krosnick, J. A. (Eds.). (1995). Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Weisberg, H., Krosnick, J. A., & Bowen, B. (1996). Introduction to survey research, polling, and data analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Carson, R. T., Conaway, M. B., Hanemann, W. M., Krosnick, J. A., Martin, K. M., McCubbin, D. R., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S. (2004). Valuing oil spill prevention: A case study of California's central coast. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Krosnick, J. A., & Fabrigar, L. R. (forthcoming). The handbook of questionnaire design. New York: Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters (click on the title to download the article or chapter)

Krosnick, J. A. (1978). One approach to the analysis of drumset playing. Percussive Notes, Spring-Summer, 143-149.

Judd, C. M., Krosnick, J. A., & Milburn, M. A. (1981). Political involvement and attitude structure in the general public. American Sociological Review, 46, 660-669.

Krosnick, J. A., & Judd, C. M. (1982). Transitions in social influence at adolescence: Who induces cigarette smoking? Developmental Psychology, 18, 359-368.

Judd, C. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1982). Attitude centrality, organization, and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 436-447.

Krosnick, J. A. (1982). Teaching percussion: Growing with your students. National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors Journal, Summer, 4-7.

Judd, C. M., Kenny, D. A., & Krosnick, J. A. (1983). Judging the positions of political candidates: Models of assimilation and contrast. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 952-963.

McAlister, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., & Milburn, M. A. (1984). Causes of adolescent cigarette smoking: Tests of a structural equation model. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47, 24-36.

Iyengar, S., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., & Krosnick, J. A. (1984). The evening news and presidential evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 778-787.

Alwin, D. F., & Krosnick, J. A. (1985). The measurement of values in surveys: A comparison of ratings and rankings. Public Opinion Quarterly, 49, 535-552.

Schuman, H., Ludwig, J., & Krosnick, J. A. (1986). The perceived threat of nuclear war, salience, and open questions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 519-536.

Krosnick, J. A., & Alwin, D. F. (1987). An evaluation of a cognitive theory of response order effects in survey measurement. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51, 201-219.

Krosnick, J. A. (1988). Attitude importance and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 240-255.

Krosnick, J. A., & Schuman, H. (1988). Attitude intensity, importance, and certainty and susceptibility to response effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 940-952.

Krosnick, J. A. (1988). The role of attitude importance in social evaluation: A study of policy preferences, presidential candidate evaluations, and voting behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 196-210.

Krosnick, J. A., & Alwin, D. F. (1988). A test of the form-resistant correlation hypothesis: Ratings, rankings, and the measurement of values. Public Opinion Quarterly, 52, 526-538.

Reprinted in Peplau, L. A., Sears, D. O., Taylor, S. E., & Freedman, J. L. (Eds.) (1988), Readings in social psychology: Classic and contemporary contributions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Reprinted in Singer, E., & Presser, S. (Eds.) (1989). Survey research methods: A reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Judd, C. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1989). The structural bases of consistency among political attitudes: The effects of political expertise and attitude importance. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler, & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude Structure and Function. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Krosnick, J. A. (1989). Attitude importance and attitude accessibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 297-308.

Krosnick, J. A. (1989). Question wording and reports of survey results: The case of Louis Harris and Aetna Life and Casualty. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53, 107-113.

Reprinted in Bulmer, H. (Ed.), Questions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Krosnick, J. A., & Alwin, D. F. (1989). Aging and susceptibility to attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 416-425.

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Government policy and citizen passion: A study of issue publics in contemporary America. Political Behavior, 12, 59-92.

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Conceptions of expertise in political psychology. Social Cognition, 8, 1-8. (also in J. Krosnick (Ed.), Thinking about politics: Comparisons of experts and novices. New York: Guilford, 1990, pp. 1-8).

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Lessons learned: A review and integration of our findings. Social Cognition, 8, 154-158. (also in J. Krosnick (Ed.), Thinking about politics: Comparisons of experts and novices. New York: Guilford, 1990, pp. 154-158).

Krosnick, J. A., Li, F., & Lehman, D. (1990). Conversational conventions, order of information acquisition, and the effect of base rates and individuating information on social judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1140-1152.

Krosnick, J. A., & Milburn, M. A. (1990). Psychological determinants of political opinionation. Social Cognition, 8, 49-72. (also in J. Krosnick (Ed.), Thinking about politics: Comparisons of experts and novices. New York: Guilford, 1990, pp. 49-72).

Krosnick, J. A., & Sedikides, C. (1990). Self-monitoring and self-protective biases in the use of consensus information to predict one's own behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 718-728.

Krosnick, J. A., & Kinder, D. R. (1990). Altering the foundations of support for the president through priming. American Political Science Review, 84, 497-512.

Reprinted in J T. Jost and J. Sidanius (Eds.) (2004). Political psychology: Key readings. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Americans' perceptions of presidential candidates: A test of the projection hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 159-182.

Alwin, D. F., & Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Aging, cohorts, and the stability of sociopolitical orientations over the life span. American Journal of Sociology, 97, 169-195.

Alwin, D. F., & Krosnick, J. A. (1991). The reliability of survey attitude measurement: The influence of question and respondent attributes. Sociological Methods and Research, 20, 139-181.

Judd, C. M., Drake, R. A., Downing, J. W., & Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Some dynamic properties of attitude structures: Context induced response facilitation and polarization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 193-202.

Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5, 213-236.

Krosnick, J. A. (1991). The stability of political preferences: Comparisons of symbolic and non-symbolic attitudes. American Journal of Political Science, 35, 547-576.

Krosnick, J. A. (1992). The impact of cognitive sophistication and attitude importance on response order effects and question order effects. In N. Schwarz and S. Sudman (Eds.), Order effects in social and psychological research (pp. 203-218). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Krosnick, J. A., & Abelson, R. P. (1992). The case for measuring attitude strength in surveys. Pp. 177-203 in J. Tanur (Ed.), Questions about questions: Inquiries into the cognitive bases of surveys. New York: Russell Sage.

Krosnick, J. A., Betz, A. L., Jussim, L. J., & Lynn, A. R. (1992). Subliminal conditioning of attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 152-162.

Lehman, D. R., Krosnick, J. A., West, R. L., & Li, F. (1992). The focus of judgment effect: A question wording effect due to hypothesis confirmation bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 690-699.

Krosnick, J. A., & Berent, M. K. (1993). Comparisons of party identification and policy preferences: The impact of survey question format. American Journal of Political Science, 37, 941-964.

Krosnick, J. A., & Brannon, L. A. (1993). The impact of the Gulf War on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: Multidimensional effects of political involvement. American Political Science Review, 87, 963-975.

Krosnick, J. A., & Brannon, L. A. (1993). The media and the foundations of Presidential support: George Bush and the Persian Gulf conflict. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 167-182.

Krosnick, J. A., Boninger, D. S., Chuang, Y. C., Berent, M. K., & Carnot, C. G. (1993). Attitude strength: One construct or many related constructs? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1132-1149.

Krosnick, J. A., Berent, M. K., & Boninger, D. S. (1994). Pockets of responsibility in the American electorate: Findings of a research program on attitude importance. Political Communication, 11, 391-411.

Krosnick, J. A., & Smith, W. A. (1994). Attitude strength. In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Ostrom, T. M., Bond, C., Krosnick, J. A., & Sedikides, C. (1994). Attitude scales: How we measure the unmeasurable. In S. Shavitt & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Persuasion: Psychological insights and perspectives. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Rahn, W. M., Krosnick, J. A., & Breuning, M. (1994). Rationalization and derivation processes in survey studies of political candidate evaluation. American Journal of Political Science, 38, 582-600.

Berent, M. K., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). The relation betweenpolitical attitude importance and knowledge structure. In M. Lodge & K. McGraw (Eds.), Political judgment: Structure and process. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Boninger, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Berent, M. K. (1995). The origins of attitude importance: Self-interest, social identification, and value-relevance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 61-80.

Boninger, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., Berent, M. K., & Fabrigar, L. R. (1995). The causes and consequences of attitude importance. In R. E. Petty and J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Fabrigar, L. R., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). Attitude importance and the false consensus effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 468-479.

Fabrigar, L. R., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). Attitude measurement and questionnaire design. In A. S. R. Manstead & M. Hewstone (Eds.), Blackwell encyclopedia of social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Fabrigar, L. R., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). Voting behavior. In A. S. R. Manstead & M. Hewstone (Eds.), Blackwell encyclopedia of social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Krosnick, J. A., & Petty, R. E. (1995). Attitude strength: An overview. In R. E. Petty and J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Krosnick, J. A., & Telhami, S. (1995). Public attitudes toward Israel: A study of the attentive and issue publics. International Studies Quarterly, 39, 535-554.

Reprinted in Israel Affairs, vol. 2 (1995/1996) and in G. Sheffer (Ed.), U.S.-Israeli relations at a crossroads. Frank Cass Publishing.

Wegener, D. T., Downing, J., Krosnick, J. A., & Petty, R. E. (1995). Measures and manipulations of strength-related properties of attitudes: Current practice and future directions. In R. E. Petty and J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Weisberg, H. F., Haynes, A. A., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). Social group polarization in 1992. In H. F. Weisberg (Ed.), Democracy's feast: Elections in America. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

Krosnick, J. A., Narayan, S. S., & Smith, W. R. (1996). Satisficing in surveys: Initial evidence. In M. T. Braverman & J. K. Slater (Eds.), Advances in survey research (pp. 29-44). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1996). News media impact on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: A program of research on the priming hypothesis. In D. Mutz & P. Sniderman (Eds.), Political persuasion and attitude change. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Narayan, S., & Krosnick, J. A. (1996). Education moderates some response effects in attitude measurement. Public Opinion Quarterly, 60, 58-88.

Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A., Marquette, J., & Curtin, M. (1996). Mail surveys for election forecasting? An evaluation of the Columbus Dispatch poll. Public Opinion Quarterly, 60, 181-227.

Krosnick, J. A., & Fabrigar, L. R. (1997). Designing rating scales for effective measurement in surveys. In L. Lyberg, P. Biemer, M. Collins, L. Decker, E. DeLeeuw, C. Dippo, N. Schwarz, and D. Trewin (Eds.), Survey Measurement and Process Quality. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1997). The anatomy of news media priming. In S. Iyengar and R. Reeves (Eds.), Do the media govern? Politicians, voters, and reporters in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Carson, R. T., Hanemann, W. M., Kopp, R. J., Krosnick, J. A., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S., Ruud, P. A., & Smith, V. K., with Conaway, M., & Martin, K. (1997). Temporal reliability of estimates from contingent valuation. Land Economics, 73, 151-163.

Carson, R. T., Hanemann, W. M., Kopp, R. J., Krosnick, J. A., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S., Ruud, P. A., & Smith, V. K., with Conaway, M., & Martin, K. (1998). Referendum design and contingent valuation: The NOAA panel's no-vote recommendation. Review of Economics and Statistics, 80, 335-338.

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (1998). The impact of candidate name order on election outcomes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 62, 291-330.

Visser, P. S., & Krosnick, J. A. (1998). The development of attitude strength over the life cycle: Surge and decline. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1388-1409.

Krosnick, J. A. (1999). Maximizing measurement quality: Principles of good questionnaire design. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of political attitudes. New York: Academic Press.

Krosnick, J. A. (1999). Survey research. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 537-567.

Bassili, J. N., & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). Do strength-related attitude properties determine susceptibility to response effects? New evidence from response latency, attitude extremity,and aggregate indices Political Psychology, 21, 107-132.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., Carson, R. T., & Mitchell, R. C. (2000). Violating conversational conventions disrupts cognitive processing of attitude questions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 465-494.

Holbrook, A. L., Bizer, G. Y., & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). Political behavior of the individual. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology. Washington, DC, and New York, NY: American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press.

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., & Visser, P. S. (2000). The impact of the Fall 1997 debate about global warming on American public opinion. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 239-260.

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2000). News media impact on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: Politically knowledgeable citizens are guided by a trusted source. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 301-315.

Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Lavrakas, P. (2000). Survey research. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A., Marquette, J., & Curtin, M. (2000). Improving election forecasting: Allocation of undecided respondents, identification of likely voters, and response order effects. In P. Lavrakas & M. Traugott (Eds.), Election polls, the news media, and democracy. New York, NY: Chatham House.

Bizer, G. Y., & Krosnick, J. A. (2001). Exploring the structure of strength-related attitude features: The relation between attitude importance and attitude accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 566-586.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., Gardner, W. L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Attitudes toward presidential candidates and political parties: Initial optimism, inertial first impressions, and a focus on flaws. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 930-950.

Krosnick, J. A. (2002). Is political psychology sufficiently psychological? Distinguishing political psychology from psychological political science. In J. Kuklinski (Ed.), Thinking about political psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Krosnick, J. A. (2002). The challenges of political psychology: Lessons to be learned from research on attitude perception. In J. Kuklinski (Ed.), Thinking about political psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Krosnick, J.A. (2002). The causes of no-opinion responses to attitude measures in surveys:They rarely are what they appear to be. In R.M. Groves, D.A. Dillman, J.L. Eltinge, and R.J.A. Little (Eds.).Survey Nonresponse.  New York: Wiley, 88-100.

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., Berent, M. K., Carson, R. T., Hanemann, W. M., Kopp, R. J., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S., Ruud, P. A., Smith, V. K., Moody, W. R., Green, M. C., & Conaway, M. (2002). The impact of 'no opinion' response options on data quality: Non-attitude reduction or an invitation to satisfice? Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, 371-403.

Krosnick, J. A., & McGraw K. M. (2002). Psychological political science vs. political psychology true to its name: A plea for balance. In K. R. Monroe (Ed.), Political psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Swait, J., Adamowicz, W., Hanemann, M., Diederich, A., Krosnick, J. A., Layton, D., Provencher, W., Schakade, D., & Tourangeau, R. (2002). Context dependence and aggregation in disaggregate choice analysis. Marketing Letters, 13, 195-205.

Anand, S., & Krosnick, J. A. (2003). The impact of attitudes toward foreign policy goals on public preferences among presidential candidates: A study of issue publics and the attentive public in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 33, 31-71.

Chang, L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Measuring the frequency of regular behaviors: Comparing the 'typical week' to the 'past week.' Sociological Methodology, 33, 55-80.

Holbrook, A. L., Green, M. C., & Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Telephone vs. face-to-face interviewing of national probability samples with long questionnaires: Comparisons of respondent satisficing and social desirability response bias. Public Opinion Quarterly, 67, 79-125.

Krosnick, J. A., Anand, S. N., & Hartl, S. P. (2003). Psychosocial predictors of heavy television viewing among preadolescents and adolescents. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25, 87-110.

Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Simmons, J. (2003). Distinguishing the cognitive and behavioral consequences of attitude importance and certainty: A new approach to testing the common-factor hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 118-141.

Bizer, G. Y., Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., Wheeler, S. C., Rucker, D. D., & Petty, R. E. (2004). The impact of personality on cognitive, behavioral, and affective political processes: The effects of need to evaluate. Journal of Personality.

Bizer, G. Y., Visser, P. S., Berent, M. K., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2004).  Importance, knowledge, and accessibility: Exploring the dimensionality of strength-related attitude properties.  In W. E. Saris & P. M. Sniderman (Eds.), Studies in public opinion: Gauging attitudes, nonattitudes, measurement error and change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bizer, G. Y., Visser, P. S., Berent, M. K., & Krosnick, J. A. (2004). Exploring the latent structure of strength-related attitude attributes. In W. E. Saris & P. M. Sniderman (Eds.), Studies in public opinion: Gauging attitudes, nonattitudes, measurement error and change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Krosnick, J. A., Miller, J. M., & Tichy, M. P. (2004). An unrecognized need for ballot reform: Effects of candidate name order. In A. N. Crigler, M. R. Just, and E. J. McCaffery (Eds.), Rethinking the vote: The politics and prospects of American election reform. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2004). Threat as a motivator of political activism: A field experiment. Political Psychology, 25, 507-523.

Anand, S., & Krosnick, J. A. (2005). Demographic predictors of media use among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. American Behavioral Scientist, 48, 539-561.

Holbrook, A. L., Berent, M. K., Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., & Boninger, D. S.  (2005).  Attitude importance and the accumulation of attitude-relevant knowledge in memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 749-769.

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2005). Meta-psychological vs. operative measures of ambivalence: Differentiating the consequences of perceived intra-psychic conflict and real intra-psychic conflict. In S. C. Craig & M. D. Martinez (Eds.), Ambivalence and the structure of public opinion. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Krosnick, J. A, Judd, C. M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2005). Attitude measurement. In D. Albarracin, B. T. Johnson, & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Handbook of attitudes and attitude change. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schaeffer, E. M., Krosnick, J. A., Langer, G. E., & Merkle, D. M. (2005). Comparing the quality of data obtained by minimally balanced and fully balanced attitude questions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69, 417-428.

Fabrigar, L. R., Krosnick, J. A., & MacDougall, B. L. (2006). Attitude measurement: Techniques for measuring the unobservable. In M. C. Green, S. Shavitt, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Persuasion: Psychological insights and perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Krosnick, J. A., Chang, L., Sherman, S. J., Chassin, L., & Presson, C. (2006). The effects of beliefs about the health consequences of cigarette smoking on smoking onset. Journal of Communication.

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., Lowe, L. & Visser, P. S. (2006).  The origins and consequences of democratic citizens’ policy agendas: A study of popular concern about global warming.  Climatic Change, 77, 7-43

Krosnick, J. A., Holbrook, A. L., & Visser, P. S. (2006). Optimizing brief assessments in research on the psychology of aging: A pragmatic approach to survey and self-report measurement. In National Research Council, When I'm 64. Committee on Aging Frontiers in Social Psychology, Personality, and Adult Developmental Psychology. Laura L. Carstensen and Christine R. Hartel, editors. Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Visser, P. S., Bizer, G. Y., & Krosnick, J. A. (2006). Exploring the latent structure of strength-related attitude attributes. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Cornell, D. G., Krosnick, J. A., & Chang, L. (2006). The case of the Student reactions to being wrongly informed of failing a high-stakes test: Minnesota Basic Standards Test.  Educational Policy, 20, 718-751.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., Moore, D., & Tourangeau, R.  (2007).  Response order effects in dichotomous categorical questions presented orally:  The impact of question and respondent attributes.  Public Opinion Quarterly, 71, 325-348.

Malhotra, N., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2007).  The effect of survey mode on inferences about political attitudes and behavior:  Comparing the 2000 and 2004 ANES to internet surveys with non-probability samples. Political Analysis, 15, 286-323.

Malhotra, N., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2007).  Retrospective and prospective performance assessments during the 2004 election campaign:  Tests of mediation and news media priming.  Political Behavior, 29, 249-278.

Malhotra, N. & Krosnick, J. A.  (2007).  Procedures for updating classification systems: A study of biotechnology and the standard occupational classification system.  Journal of Official Statistics, 23, 409-432.

Schneider, D., Tahk, A., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2007).  Reconsidering the impact of behavior prediction questions on illegal drug use: The importance of using proper analytic methods in social psychology.  Social Influence, 2, 178-196.

Holbrook, A. L., Krosnick, J. A., & Pfent, A. M. (2007). Response rates in surveys by the news media and government contractor survey research firms. In J. Lepkowski, B. Harris-Kojetin, P. J. Lavrakas, C. Tucker, E. de Leeuw, M. Link, M. Brick, L. Japec, & R. Sangster (Eds.), Advances in Telephone Survey Methodology. New York: Wiley.

Iyengar, S., Hahn, K. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Walker, J.  (2008).  Selective exposure to campaign communication: The role of anticipated agreement and issue public membership.  Journal of Politics, 70, 186-200.

Harder, J., & Krosnick, J. A. (2008). Why do people vote? A psychological analysis of the causes of voter turnout. Journal of Social Issues, 64, 525-249.

Visser, P. S., Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2008).  Knowledge and attitudes.  In W. Donsbach & M. W. Traugott (Eds.), Handbook of Public Opinion Research. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.

Malhotra, N., Krosnick, J. A., and Thomas, R. K.  (2009).  Optimal design of branching questions to measure bipolar constructs.  Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(3), E485-E518

Malka, A., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2009).  The association of knowledge with concern about global warming: Trusted information sources shape public thinking.  Risk Analysis, 29, 633-647. 

Rabinowitz, J. L., Sears, D. O., Sidanius, J., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2009).  Why do white Americans oppose race-targeted policies? Clarifying the impact of symbolic racism. Political Psychology, 30, 805-828.

Chiang, L., & Krosnick, J.A.  (in press).  National surveys via RDD telephone interviewing vs. the Internet: Comparing sample representativeness and response quality.  Public Opinion Quarterly. 

Eaton, A. A., Visser, P. S., Krosnick, J. A., & Anand, S. (2009). Social power and attitude strength over the life cycle. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A.  (in press).  Social desirability bias in voter turnout reports:  Tests using the item count technique.  Public Opinion Quarterly. 

Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (in press). Measuring voter turnout by using the randomized response technique: Evidence calling into question the method's validity. Public Opinion Quarterly.

Pasek, J., & Krosnick, J. A.  (in press).  Optimizing survey questionnaire design in political science: Insights from psychology.  In J. Leighley (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schneider, D., DeBell, M., & Krosnick, J. A.  (in press).  Using the American National Election Study surveys to test social psychological hypotheses.  In K. Trzesniewski, M. B. Donnellan, & R. E. Lucas (Eds),  Obtaining and analyzing archival data: Methods and illustrations.  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Krosnick, J. A., & Presser, S.  (in press).  Questionnaire design.  In J. D. Wright & P. V. Marsden (Eds.), Handbook of Survey Research (Second Edition).  West Yorkshire, England: Emerald Group.

Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., & Harder, J. (in press). The psychological underpinnings of political behavior. In S. T. Fisko, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology. New York, N.Y: John Wiley.

Other Publications

Telhami, S., & Krosnick, J. A. (1989). American sentiment on Israeli-Palestinian fight: No favorites; Just make peace. Op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1989. (Reprinted in the Columbus Dispatch, March 17, 1989)

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). The uses and abuses of public opinion polls: The case of Louis Harris and Associates. Chronicles, 14, 47-49.

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). The impact of satisficing on survey data quality. In Proceedings of the Bureau of the Census 1990 Annual Research Conference (pp. 835-845). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Smith, W. R., Culpepper, I. J., & Krosnick, J. A. (1992). The impact of question order on cognitive effort in survey responding. In Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Krosnick, J. A., & Hermann, M. G. (1993). Report on the 1991 Ohio State University Summer Institute in Political Psychology. Political Psychology, 14, 363-373.

Carson, R. T., Hanemann, W. M., Kopp, R. J., Krosnick, J. A., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S., Ruud, P. A., & Smith, V. K. (1994). Prospective interim lost use value due to DDT and PCB contamination in the Southern California Bight. La Jolla, CA: Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

Carson, R. T., Conaway, M. B., Hanemann, W. M., Krosnick, J. A., Martin, K. M., McCubbin, D. R., Mitchell, R. C., Presser, S. (1995). The value of preventing oil spill injuries to natural resources along California's central coast. La Jolla, CA: Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

Krosnick, J. A., Visser, P. S., & Holbrook, A. L. (1998). American opinion on global warming: The impact of the Fall 1997 debate. Resources, 133, 5-9.

Krosnick, J. A. (2000). The threat of satisficing in surveys: The shortcuts respondents take in answering questions. Survey Methods Newsletter, 20, 4-8.

Krosnick, J. A. (2000). Americans are ready for the debacle to end. Newsday, December 7, A63-A66.

Krosnick, J. A. (2001). The psychology of voting. The Psychology Place. http://www.psychplace.com/editorials/krosnick/krosnick1.html.

Green, M. C., & Krosnick, J. A. (2001). Comparing telephone and face-to-face interviewing in terms of data quality: The 1982 National Election Studies Method Comparison Project. In D. O'Rourke (Ed.), Health survey research methods. Hyattsville, Maryland: Department of Health and Human Services. DHHS Publication No. (PHS) 01-1013.

Silver, M. D., & Krosnick, J. A.  (2001).  Optimizing survey measurement accuracy by matching question design to respondent memory organization.  In Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference, 2001.  NTIS: PB2002-100103. 

Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Introduction. In G. R. Walden, Survey research methodology, 1990-1999: An annotated bibliography. Westpoint, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Krosnick, J. A. (2003). AAPOR in Nashville: The program for the 58^th annual conference. AAPOR News, 31, 1, 3.

Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Response rates, Huffington, and More: Reflections on the 58^th annual conference. AAPOR News, 31, 1, 4-5.

Krosnick, J. A. (2003). Proceedings of the fifty-eighth annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Public Opinion Quarterly.

Fiorina, M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2004). The Economist/YouGov Internet Presidential poll. http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/Paper.pdf.

Krosnick, J. A.  (2006).  What pilots could tell us.  Op-ed essay in The New York Times, August 30, 2006.

Krosnick, J. A.  (2006).  Are we really safer in the skies today?  Aviation Law Prof Blog, September 5.  http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/aviation/

Krosnick, J. A.  (2006).  In the voting booth, bias starts at the top.  Op-ed in The New York Times, November 4, 2006.

Krosnick, J. A.  (2006).  In the voting booth, name order can sway an election.  Opinion essay in the “Perspective” section of The San Jose Mercury News, November 26, 2006.

Krosnick, J. A. (2008). Ballot changes cited in vote's discrepancy with polls: Clinton's favorable placement on ballots may account for part of poll mistakes. Opinion essay on ABCNews.com, January 9, 2008.