Respondents guess they are being studied even when offered an opt-out

Evidence

I used to give respondents a fifth possibility: “None of the above. This survey is a mixture of statements about many unrelated things.” But this always got the fewest votes; subjects believed I was investigating something. So I dropped this option. Surprisingly, knowledge of the RWA Scale’s purpose may not lower respondents’ scores much. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4035

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to demand-characteristics debates in the vault’s survey-based authoritarianism research; offering a ‘nothing to this’ option doesn’t defuse the guess.