The Impact of Agreement Bias on the Ranking of Questionnaire Response.

QUESTIONNAIRES; SURVEYS; PERSONALITY; MENTAL health; PSYCHOLOGY; LABOR unions

AGREEMENT BIAS refers to the fact that people are more prone to agree with any statement than to disagree with it. Recent theory has inclined to the view that agreement bias is of little importance as a source of invalidity in measures of personality (Nunnally, 1978, p.669). But as Ray (1983) noted, it is not necessary for such bias to be a trait in order to constitute a problem in social research. A case in point is when survey results based on Likert-type questionnaires are presented in ranked form. This may be desirable when highlighting which aspect of a particular topic is liked or disliked most. For example, a recent British study (Jamieson & Lightfoot, 1982) presented schoolchildren's rank order of strength of agreement or disagreement with various statements about trade unions. The results indicated that most strength of feeling was shown in agreement with some of the anti-union statements in the questionnaire. The authors concluded that the respondents had a generally unfavorable view of trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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