I doubt there’s that much danger of priming here, because most people’s political identification is quite well entrenched and the main effect of a question like this is going to be to call to mind that affiliation, whether or not it matches any of the options in the question.
On the other hand, I’m not quite sure why “communist” is on the list of options, especially with the explanatory text saying “for example the old Soviet Union”; there aren’t a lot of advocates for Soviet-style communism around. (Last year 8 people picked this; the next most unpopular option got 35 votes, and not-answering-at-all got 30.) I doubt comparability would be badly broken by removing it.
(I’d also argue that “libertarian” is in practice a right-wing option—e.g., libertarians tend to vote for parties of the right in preference to parties of the left[1] -- and that what’s described here as “liberal” is, if you look at a broader scale than just the US, pretty much centrist. I am aware that both of these are controversial assertions, and to reduce thread-derailing I will probably not respond to comments on them. Anyway, for anyone who agrees with me the picture after removing communism would then be two right, one centre, one left.)
Have a the main (first) politics question not prime people to give left-wing answers by offering 3 left wing options and only one right wing option.
What’s left and what’s right depends on where the middle happens to be. I think it makes sense to order the answer based on the frequency with which they were chosen the last time.
Standard, pointless request, because it would break comparability, though it is still worth saying:
Have a the main (first) politics question not prime people to give left-wing answers by offering 3 left wing options and only one right wing option.
I doubt there’s that much danger of priming here, because most people’s political identification is quite well entrenched and the main effect of a question like this is going to be to call to mind that affiliation, whether or not it matches any of the options in the question.
On the other hand, I’m not quite sure why “communist” is on the list of options, especially with the explanatory text saying “for example the old Soviet Union”; there aren’t a lot of advocates for Soviet-style communism around. (Last year 8 people picked this; the next most unpopular option got 35 votes, and not-answering-at-all got 30.) I doubt comparability would be badly broken by removing it.
(I’d also argue that “libertarian” is in practice a right-wing option—e.g., libertarians tend to vote for parties of the right in preference to parties of the left[1] -- and that what’s described here as “liberal” is, if you look at a broader scale than just the US, pretty much centrist. I am aware that both of these are controversial assertions, and to reduce thread-derailing I will probably not respond to comments on them. Anyway, for anyone who agrees with me the picture after removing communism would then be two right, one centre, one left.)
I doubts that true. There are a lot of people who might label themselves as conservatives or they might label themselves as libertarian.
Depending on my own mood I might self label as “Liberal” or as “Socialist” in that quiz but I’m affiliated with neither label.
What’s left and what’s right depends on where the middle happens to be. I think it makes sense to order the answer based on the frequency with which they were chosen the last time.
Yes, except that to minimize anchoring, I would put them in reverse order of frequency.
I don’t think so.
Let’s say you seperate numbers into four piles:
Group A: 1-5
Group B: 5-25
Group C: 25-90
Group D: 90-100
How should you list those groups to minize that someone picks the wrong group? C, B, D, A seems to be the best order.
Separating out on group into two subgroups shouldn’t put them higher but lower on the list.
IAWYC, but with that particular example any order other than A, B, C, D would violate the principle of least astonishment.