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The debate on open-closed survey questioning & interviewing took shape in an organizational competition between groups of commercial & academic researchers working in the federal government during WWII. The controversy hardened differences between pollsters & certain academic social scientists, without bringing experimental evidence to bear on the issues. Open questioning has yielded over the years to the dominance of closed questioning, in response to in-house experience with questions & the relentless rise in survey costs, not from methodological research of any scope. The questioning controversy, shaped in good part by ideologies about research, has remained largely untouched by research. 70 References. AA.

On poll questions, levels of expressed public ignorance or indifference--'no opinion' or 'don't know' (DK)--can partly be explained by certain properties of the questions pollsters ask, although the educational level of R's is the single best predictor. 'No opinion' levels are analyzed in 2 large sets of recent poll questions published by Gallup & Harris. 312 questions were analyzed across 4 variables: language complexity, task difficulty, question form, & question content. A measure of language complexity of the questions shows no relationship to DK. However, question content best illuminates levels of 'no opinion' in both polls & points to some unique characteristics of each. The importance of question content is demonstrated in 2 additional sets of Gallup & Harris data. The more difficult kind of question content dominates in all 4 sets of poll questions examined. 9 Tables. Modified HA.

This article examines recent evidence on racial effects in interviewing northern Ur black R's on both racial & nonracial topics. It examines such effects by age, educ, & several other background variables, & provides some evidence on which responses are distorted: those given to white interviewers, or those to black. Questions dealing with militant protest & hostility to whites showed the greatest sensitivity to interviewer effect. Reports of racial discrimination, poor living conditions, & personal background showed little interviewer influence. AA.

What unique problems currently confront women eager to pursue careers in the discipline of political science? This question was a central one for the Association's Committee on the Status of Women, organized two years ago. As a major part of its fact-finding activities, the Committee conducted a mail survey of graduate students and post-graduate professionals in the discipline during the spring of 1970.It is obvious that the development of all careers present obstacles. But the Committee survey was designed to arrive at some balanced and realistic view of those points at which women in particular encounter difficulties that are less prevalent for men in comparable situations.In the background stood the obvious fact, well documented elsewhere, that in the progress over career development hurdles from undergraduate majors in political science through to active roles as adult professionals in the discipline, women show much more marked rates of attrition than men. Clearly a substantial proportion of the extra attrition arises because of a choice on the part of the female at one point or another in favor of a conventional sex role within the family, with a consequent abandonment of career aspirations. However, increasing numbers of women would like to maintain a mix of family and career roles, and there is reason to believe that the current structure of opportunities raises artificial obstacles to such professional participation, and loses important talent to the profession.