Cognition, Communication, and Survey Measurement

3 credits · Graduate credit

Survey data are only as meaningful as the answers that respondents provide. Hence, the processes that underlie respondents' answers are of crucial importance. This course draws on current theorizing in cognitive and social psychology pertaining to issues like language comprehension, information storage and retrieval, autobiographical memory, social judgment, and the communicative dynamics of survey interviewing to understand how respondents deal with the questions asked and arrive at an answer.