Does the Order of Presentation of 0-10 Rating Scales Affect Responses?: An Application to Telephone Surveys

Abstract

Despite the long tradition of research on «response effects» in surveys, there is little literature on the impact of the direction of administration of ordinal rating scales. Recent studies have shown that varying the direction of an 11-point scale produces different distributions. This study seeks to analyse to what extent these conclusions, found among North American society, are also applicable to Spanish society. A telephone survey administered to two equivalent samples of an autonomous region provided very similar responses, regardless of the direction of ordinal rating scales.