Asking questions and influencing answers

The social survey has become an essential tool in modern society, providing crucial measurements of social change, describing social life, and guiding government policy. But the validity of surveys is fragile and depends ultimately upon the accuracy of answers to survey questions. Recently featured in The New York Times, Questions About Questions brings together experts in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and survey research to probe the relationship between the presentation and interpretation of questions and the accuracy of survey responses. "these chapters provide a good sense of the range of survey problems investigated by the cognitive movement, the methods and ideas it draws upon, and the results it has yielded." —American Journal of Sociology