Fun with Order Effects

Fun with Order Effects
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

A quick thought about the approval question asked about the confirmation of new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the new Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll (that we blogged earlier this afternoon). Take a look at the question asked just before it:

8. Do you think failing to pay part of your taxes for a few years is enough to disqualify someone from serving as Treasury Secretary and heading the Internal Revenue Service?

58% Yes

33% No

9% Don't know

9. Do you approve or disapprove of the Senate confirming Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury?


35% Approve**

44% Disapprove

21% Don't know

Gee, do you think that results for question #9 might have been different had it come before question #8?

Here's a friendly request to our readers that regularly conduct national omnibus surveys (and you know who you are): Could you try a split form experiment where half the respondents hear question #8 first and the other half hear question #9 first?

The original version of this post mistakenly used the wrong answer categories for question #9

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot