Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This article presents, for the first time in English, findings from a Danish research project on language comprehension and memory as generators of measurement problems in sociological and other social-science survey studies. Utilizing survey questionnaires as instruments of measurements, the article deals with the linguistic sensitivity of Danish adults and the measurement problems it entails. The article uncovers the nature and extent of statistically significant response differences due to moderate linguistic changes. The article problematizes the trustworthiness of Danish social-science survey studies and provides evidence that respondents' answers to survey questions depend to a marked extent on the latter's wording. The empirical basis is a split-sample experiment in which 1900 respondents completed two versions of the 'same' questionnaire.
Henning Olsen (Sun,) studied this question.