Responses to affirmative action: Is there a question order affect?

This paper analyzes the affect of question order on support for affirmative action. While the literature is replete with studies detailing the racial differences for support for affirmative action, there is a dearth of studies that analyze how probing, using open-ended questions, can influence individuals’ responses. Given this, we seek to analyze and explain how open-ended questions, related to affirmative action, might affect responses to close-ended questions as well as how their joint interaction help us to understand resonant attitudes. Using a split-ballot approach, we found that responses to the closedended question were significantly affected by the experimental design.

► We seek to determine if question order affects responses to affirmative action.
► Randomized split-ballot determined responses to affirmative action questions.
► We analyze how open-ended questions affect the responses to close-ended questions
► Responses to the close-ended question were affected by the experimental design.