Repeatedly Measuring Political Interest: Can we Reduce Respondent’ Recall Ability and Memory Effects in Surveys Using Memory Interference Tasks?

Abstract

Abstract It is common practice in behavioral and social sciences to repeat questions, such as in pretest–posttest designs. However, if respondents recall their first answer to a repeated question and use it to decide their second answer, this may cause memory effects, affecting empirical findings. So far, only a few studies have investigated respondents’ recall ability and memory effects in surveys. Thus, we conducted an experiment in a probability-based online panel (N = 4,681) where we repeatedly asked a question on political interest. Our results reveal that respondents’ recall ability is high and was not reduced by the implementation of memory interference tasks. Memory effects, in contrast, were low (about 7%). They were also not reduced by memory interference tasks.