New insights on respondents' recall ability and memory effects when repeatedly measuring political efficacy

Abstract

Many study designs in social science research rely on repeated measurements implying that the same respondents are asked the same (or nearly the same) questions at least twice. An assumption made by such study designs is that respondents second answer does not depend on their first answer. However, if respondents recall their initial answer and base their second answer on it memory effects may affect the survey outcome. In this study, I investigate respondents' recall ability and memory effects within the same survey and randomly assign respondents to a device type (PC or smartphone) and a response format (response scale or text field) for reporting their previous answer. While the results reveal no differences regarding device types, they reveal differences regarding response formats. Respondents’ recall ability is higher when they are provided with the response scale again than when they are only provided with a text field (without displaying the response scale again). The same finding applies to the size of estimated memory effects. This study provides evidence that the size of memory effects may have been overestimated in previous studies.