DO SURVEYS OVERSTATE PUBLIC CONCERN

Because the item, ''How concerned are you about ... ?'' asks respondents to indicate their level of concern about an issue, some respondents may sense it assumes they are concerned or should be concerned about the issue. Using a filter question to first determine if people are concerned about the issue before asking for their degree of concern may help solve this problem. To test this hypothesis, a split-ballot experiment was embedded in a national random digit dialing telephone survey on food-related issues. For the four items included in the experiment, the group receiving the filter versions of the questions gave roughly double the percentages of ''not concerned'' responses as the group receiving standard items, and the filter group also gave fewer responses at the upper end of the response scale.