Several design features make lawmakers’ RWA responses likely truthful

Evidence

As to whether the politicians answered truthfully, we have to realize, first, that except in a few cases when respondents signed their names to the surveys, we do not know for certain that any lawmaker wrote down the responses. Assuming the answers came from their own hands, and not an aide’s, did the legislators reveal their true attitudes to us? We cannot say, of course. We can only observe that they knew they were anonymous, that their answers would not affect anything, that very few people can detect what the wide-ranging, balanced RWA Scale measures, that the politicians were not asked about their party affiliation until the very end, and that they were asked to participate only if they freely chose to do so. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3687