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International Journal of Public Opinion Research Advance Access originally published online on March 18, 2005
International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2005 17(4):456-472; doi:10.1093/ijpor/edh075
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International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 17 No. 4 © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.

Testing Visual Signals in Representative Surveys

Thomas Petersen

Thomas Petersen is a researcher at the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, Germany. He studied communication and has been working in the areas of value change, political attitudes, marketing research, and methodology. Petersen is WAPOR’s national representative for Germany and chairs the organization’s publication committee.

Address correspondence to Dr. Thomas Petersen, Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, 78472 Allensbach, Germany, E-mail: tpetersen{at}ifd-allensbach.de

This article describes a way for the effects of portrait photos in the mass media to be investigated by combining split ballot experiments and media content analysis. In a first step, visual signals with distinct effects on perception are identified on the basis of theory and of empirical findings from the fields of psychology and behavior research. These signals must be gestures and facial expressions that can easily be made the object of experimental variation and allow for easy coding in content analyses. Accumulating a great number of such individual experiments would provide a ‘map’ of the effects of visual signals and their relative strengths. Incorporating these signals, in a second step, into the codebooks used for media content analysis would enable a more accurate appraisal than previously possible of the influence of optical commentary in mass media reporting. The results of the first step of such an endeavor are presented: a split ballot experiment conducted by the Institute für Demoskopie Allensbach into the effects of the angle at which one holds one’s head and the gesture whereby one’s hand covers the lower half of one’s face. The angle of the depicted person’s head has a stronger influence on respondents than the gesture does.


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Home page
 Int J Public Opin ResHome page
T. Petersen and O. Jandura
Testing Visual Signals in Representative Surveys in Combination with Media Content Analyses of the 2002 German Federal Election Campaign
Int. J. Public Opin. Res., March 1, 2007; 19(1): 89 - 96.
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