… To track changes over the decades in attitudes and action accurately, not only should the samples drawn in different eras be comparable, the questions asked should be the same – whether they are about church attendance, political participation, racial views, whatever. As the noted sociologist Otis Dudley Duncan reportedly stated, “If you want to measure change, don’t change the measure” – i.e., the wording of question. …
Survey designers cannot fully rely on fixed meanings. Paradoxically, the pollsters’ craft requires judgements about social change in order to write the questions to measure social change. CONT.
Claude S. Fischer, UC Berkeley