Smokers' BMI and perceived health: Does the order of questions matter?

- Examined smokers self-reported health
- We found that self-reported health outcomes are worse when smokers are first asked to report their weight.
- The order of questions only seemed to affect responses for those who are overweight (BMI > 25).

We surveyed 431 daily smokers between November 2014 and March 2015 to examine the impact of the order of questions on the response to a self-reported health question as part of a larger experimental study. We randomized the question order, with some respondents providing their weight prior to self-reporting their health, while others did the opposite. We found that self-reported health outcomes are worse when smokers are first asked to report their weight. However, the order of questions only seems to impact those who are overweight as we did not find evidence that the order of questions affected responses for those with a BMI below 25. These findings suggest that the order of asking self-rated health and weight questions appears to matter, at least for overweight current smokers.