A survey question is biased when it makes one answer seem better than the other.
See solution.
Practice makes perfect
We are given a survey — conducted by Malik — about the legal voting age in the United States. His initial survey question was revised after his friends noted that it was biased.
Survey Question
Initial
Revised
Isn't the legal voting age too high?
Don't you think the legal voting age should be lower?
Now, we will analyze each of the highlighted parts of both questions. Let's think about reasons of potential bias introduced by these parts.
Question
Part
Reason
Initial
Isn't [...] too high?
This part can make one answer seem better than the other.
too high
This phrase may evoke strong feelings in some individuals and lead them to give the correct answer.
Revised
Don't you think [...] should be lower?
This part can also make one answer seem better than the other.
A negative answer to this question does not provide any information about whether the legal voting age should be raised or be kept at the same level.
Finally, we will correct the error in the rewritten survey question. Keep in mind that we need to include all of the possible answers. Therefore, we will ask respondents what they think the voting age should be.
Corrected Survey Question
What do you think the legal voting age should be?
Remember that here we are only showing one possibility of an unbiased question.
