Question

Provide a correction (alternative survey question) to the poorly worded survey question below:

The government should force you to pay taxes.

Agree                                 Disagree

Answer 1

Subtle wording differences can produce great differences in results. For example, non-specific words and ideas can cause a certain level of confusing ambiguity in your survey. “Could,” “should,” and “might” all sound about the same, but may produce a 20% difference in agreement to a question.In addition, strong words such as “force” and “prohibit” represent control or action and can bias your results.

given sentence is, The government should force you to pay taxes.

It has used words such as should and force which may bias your result. No one likes to be forced, and no one likes higher taxes. This agreement scale question makes it sound doubly bad to raise taxes. When survey questions read more like normative statements than questions looking for objective feedback, any ability to measure that feedback becomes difficult.

So, alternative survey questions can be

1. The government should increase taxes.

2. The government needs to increase taxes.