The Role of Conditioning Information in Reports of Subjective Phenomena
                                
Jeff Dominitz
California Institute of Technology
May 1997
                                
Abstract

Reports of subjective phenomena are inherently subject to some
uncertainty on the part of the respondent.  The existence of
uncertainty is obvious when the reports are of subjective expectations
about prospective outcomes.  In other cases, it is not so clear.
Sometimes respondents are asked to make hypothetical choices, in which
case uncertainty remains unless all relevant elements of the
hypothetical scenario are specified.  More generally, whenever
concepts are loosely defined, be they prospective outcomes,
hypothetical scenarios, or other relevant aspects of the question,
uncertainty about the appropriate response will remain.

This paper will consider the interaction between this uncertainty and
the text and context of the survey question.  Empirical evidence will
be presented to illustrate how question-wording and question-ordering
may influence the way in which the respondent resolves the
uncertainty.  Particular attention will be paid to examples in which
researchers may infer that respondents are deficient in some way
(e.g., do not have coherent preferences, do not provide coherent
probability assessments, or do not form rational expectations), but
the apparent deficiency may be attributed instead to information
inferred from the question text and context.