Response Latency as a Signal to Question Problems in Survey Research

This research explores the potential utility of response latency as an index of question problems in survey research. The time respondents took to answer three types of bad questions was compared to the time they took to answer the repaired versions of the questions. Questions containing a superfluous negative and double-barreled questions took longer to answer than nearly identical questions without these problems. Repaired versions of questions soliciting frequency estimates, however, took longer to answer than their problematic counter parts. The results are discussed in the context of a model of question answering, and their implications for survey methodology are explored.