Document Type
Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1017/psrm.2023.54
Journal Title
Political Science Research and Methods
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Survey researchers testing the effectiveness of arguments for or against policies traditionally employ between-subjects designs. In doing so, they lose statistical power and the ability to precisely estimate public attitudes. We explore the efficacy of an approach often used to address these limitations: the repeated measures within-subjects (RMWS) design. This study tests the competing hypotheses that (1) the RMWS will yield smaller effects due to respondents' desire to maintain consistency (the “opinion anchor” hypothesis), and (2) the RMWS will yield larger effects because the researcher provides respondents with the opportunity to update their attitudes (the “opportunity to revise” hypothesis). Using two survey experiments, we find evidence for the opportunity to revise hypothesis, and discuss the implications for future survey research.
Publisher Statement
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Recommended Citation
McDonald, J., & Hanmer, M. J. (2025). Evaluating methods for examining the relative persuasiveness of policy arguments. Political Science Research and Methods, 13(1), 229–236. doi:10.1017/psrm.2023.54
Included in
Models and Methods Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Social Statistics Commons
Comments
The definitive article is available on the website of of Cambridge University Press - https://www.cambridge.org/core.
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023.