pol question

    Hey there /pol/,

    Since my college has mandated 2 classes of political science, I am have ran into a pickle.

    My professor has assigned a task which to analyze poll question's language and wording and I can not for the life of me find what is wrong with this question.

    Here is the question:

    >Do you believe that partial birth abortion is always wrong, almost always wrong, only sometimes wrong, or not wrong at all?

    And he wants to know whats wrong with the wording on it. For the life of me I just don't know. I don't know the etiquette around here so if I must do something then I will but please help if you can.

    Thanks.

The root of the problem is the irrationality of the audience who allow wording to influence their decision, technically there is nothing wrong with any question but since we can't change people's irrationality polls have to be worded as abstractly as possible to minimize this.

This probably isn't the text book answer.

I guess the order the questions are in, the way the question breaks the issue down into degrees of wrongness and the difference between "almost always" and "sometimes" are what is wrong with it.

[quote]Do you believe that[/quote]
Fine

[quote]Partial birth abortion[/quote]
Hmmm

[quote]is always wrong, almost always wrong, only sometimes wrong, or not wrong at all?[/quote]
Thats ok

I think it might be 'partial birth abortion'. He might turn around and say, there's no such thing! One guy writes "I am certain that Partial Birth Abortion does not exist in any medical dictionary" ¹. So it may be a case of rewording the question to "If you think partial birth abortion exists, is it always wrong, almost always wrong," etc.

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^{1: http://home.ca.inter.net/sfortin/prose/articles/pro-life/PBA.html}

The order of choices implies a best to worst, or worst to best problem. Second, it uses the word wrong in all choices which again implies that abortion is wrong. Go with the second. The word wrong implies abortion is wrong. Reworded so you can see the problem is abortion right, sometimes right, never right, or only in certain situations right. This implies abortion is right as the question implies it is wrong and will bias the person answering the question. Surveys should not be biased