© 1993 World Association for Public Opinion Research
HIDDEN NEGATIVISM: EVALUATION OF SWEDISH PARTIES AND THEIR LEADERS UNDER DIFFERENT SURVEY METHODS
Peter Esaiasson, faculty member at the Department of Political Science, Goteborg University, has been involved with the Swedish Election Studies Program for a number of years. His special focus has been on the history of election campaigns in Sweden, party leaders, and compositional studies of the Swedish parliament. He has written three books on these topics.
Donald Granberg, Research Associate of the Center for Research in Social Behavior at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has done research on the social psychology of politics, the abortion controversy, and the Monty Hall dilemma. He spent three years in Sweden doing comparative analyses and collaborating on survey analyses with Swedish colleagues.
Abstract
A comparison was made of how Swedish adults evaluated political parties and the party leaders under three different survey methods: in-person interviews, telephone interviews, and mailed questionnaires. Both the party leaders and the parties were evaluated more negatively by people responding on the mailed questionnaires. Telephone and in-person interviewees did not differ significantly. The evidence did not indicate that the mailed questionnaire respondents answered more carelessly or in a less coherent manner. The level of evaluation was affected by the method, but the structure of the answers was not. The results imply that most estimates of popular support for political leaders underestimate the level of disapproval.