EFFECTS OF CATEGORY ORDER ON ANSWERS IN MAIL AND TELEPHONE SURVEYS

Past research suggests that mail surveys encourage a primacy effect, w hich is a tendency to choose the first answers from a list, whereas te lephone surveys encourage a recency effect, a tendency to choose the l ast answers from a list. This paper summarizes results from 82 new exp eriments conducted in 12 separate surveys in seven states. Only four o f 33 mail survey comparisons exhibited significant primacy effects, wh ile five of 26 experiments in telephone surveys exhibited recency effe cts. In addition, only three of 23 cross-method comparisons produced a significant primacy/recency effect in the expected manner. The conclu sion is that the prevalence of primacy and recency effects has been ov er-estimated by past research and a new theoretical approach that take s into account multiple causation is needed for examining these effect s.