THE ROLE OF AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES DURING QUESTIONNAIRE COMPLETION

The use of affective and cognitive decision-making processes during qu estionnaire completion is examined through protocol analysis. Characte ristics of the questionnaire, such as length and extremity of the scal e anchor cues, resulted in more affective processing. Respondent-relat ed variables, such as product familiarity, attitude toward survey rese arch, and sex, had little influence on decision making. Finally, affec tive decision making influenced the outcomes of the questionnaire resp onse analysis by being associated with more within-item variance, less decision time, and lower ratings. The implications of the results to applied and theoretical research are discussed. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.