Uninformed respondents degrade survey reliability by acquiescing indiscriminately

Evidence

In general, the better subjects understand items, the more they have thought about the issues beforehand, the more motivated they are to give you accurate answers, and the better their reading comprehension, the less response sets will disrupt the internal consistency of balanced measures. But some people may not have thought much about the issues raised, may simply hold inconsistent ideas, and so on, which leads them to yea-say to both protrait and contrait items. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 818

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the satisficing hypothesis in survey methodology — Krosnick’s claim that respondents who lack cognitive engagement default to the least-effort response strategy. Also connects to the ‘motivated to give accurate answers’ construct. — connects to: Pre-1962 survey phrasing ambiguously mapped opposition to integration. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 1330