Acquiescence bias

Acquiescence bias, also known as agreement bias,[1] is a category of response bias common to survey research[2] in which respondents have a tendency to select a positive response option[1][3] or indicate a positive connotation disproportionately more frequently.[2][4][5] Respondents do so without considering the content[3] of the question or their 'true' preference.[1] Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yea-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt. Questions affected by acquiescence bias take the following format: a stimulus in the form of a statement is presented, followed by 'agree/disagree,' 'yes/no' or 'true/false' response options.[2][6] For example, a respondent might be presented with the statement "gardening makes me feel happy," and would then be expected to select either 'agree' or 'disagree.' Such question formats are favoured by both survey designers and respondents because they are straightforward to produce and respond to.[3][6] The bias is particularly prevalent in the case of surveys or questionnaires that employ truisms as the stimuli, such as: "It is better to give than to receive" or "Never a lender nor a borrower be". Acquiescence bias can introduce systematic errors that affect the validity of research by confounding attitudes and behaviours with the general tendency to agree, which can result in misguided inference. [2] Research suggests that the proportion of respondents who carry out this behaviour is between 10% and 20%.[2]

  1. ^ a b c Baron-Epel, Orna; Kaplan, Giora; Weinstein, Ruth; Green, Manfred S. (October 2010). "Extreme and acquiescence bias in a bi-ethnic population". European Journal of Public Health. 20 (5): 543–548. doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckq052. ISSN 1464-360X. PMID 20439322.
  2. ^ a b c d e Kuru, Ozan; Pasek, Josh (2016-04-01). "Improving social media measurement in surveys: Avoiding acquiescence bias in Facebook research". Computers in Human Behavior. 57: 82–92. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.008. ISSN 0747-5632.
  3. ^ a b c Krosnick, Jon A. (February 1999). "Survey Research". Annual Review of Psychology. 50 (1): 537–567. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.537. ISSN 0066-4308. PMID 15012463.
  4. ^ Watson, Dorothy (1992). "Correcting for Acquiescent Response Bias in the Absence of a Balanced Scale: An Application to Class Consciousness". Sociological Methods & Research. 21 (1): 52–88. doi:10.1177/0049124192021001003. S2CID 122977362.
  5. ^ Moss, Simon (2008). "Acquiescence bias". Archived from the original on 2011-02-18. Retrieved 2010-07-19.
  6. ^ a b Pasek, Josh; Krosnick, Jon A. (2010-02-25). Leighley, Jan E. (ed.). "Optimizing Survey Questionnaire Design in Political Science". The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235476.001.0001. ISBN 9780199235476. Retrieved 2020-04-14.