The Influence of Frequency Scales on the Response Behavior. A Theoretical Model and its Empirical Examination

A strongly modified and with psychological components enhanced Rational-Choice Model, for explaining the influence of differently categorized frequency scales on the survey response behavior, is proposed. Here, the assumption of perfect rationality is abandoned and instead, the respondents are assumed to use heuristic cues - as for example the format of response scales -under two conditions in order to select an answer. Accordingly, the format of response scales is expected to be utilized as a heuristic cue if either the requested information is not available in the respondents memory, or the participants motivation and their cognitive resources are too constrained to employ a more elaborated mode of information processing. The relevance and interplay of all three explanation factors is integrated into a two-stage model of response behavior. The resulting predictions are tested in a field experiment, where the response latency of the answers, the attitude towards surveys and the subjects' age as well as their education are used to operationalize the theoretical parameter. In agreement with the model's predictions, the strength of the response effects are generally found to decrease as the response speed increases. Furthermore, the determinants of the cognitive elaboration proves only to be relevant under the condition of a high accessibility of the target information: Here, only subjects with low motivation and low cognitive resources are influenced. In contrast, respondents with a low degree of information accessibility are subject to very strong response effects, independent of the elaboration of their processing mode.