EXAMPLE 5 Words make a big difference

In May 2013, the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post/ABC News conducted polls asking whether people felt the U.S. Department of Justice had the right to subpoena Associated Press reporters’ phone records. Each survey phrased the question differently, and each survey found different results.

When the Pew Research Center asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the Justice Department’s decision to subpoena the phone records of AP journalists as part of an investigation into the disclosure of classified information?” 36% of respondents approved. The Washington Post/ABC News survey said, “The AP reported classified information about U.S. anti-terrorism efforts and prosecutors have obtained AP’s phone records through a court order. Do you think this action by federal prosecutors is or is not justified?” Fifty-two (52%) of respondents to this survey said that the action of federal prosecutors was justified.

Before asking about approval or disapproval of the Justice Department’s actions, Pew asked how closely respondents had followed the issues that led up to the subpoena, and 64% reported not following the news story too closely. Additionally, the difference in wording—“decision to subpoena” in the Pew Research survey versus “obtained . . . through a court order” used by the Washington Post/ABC News survey—could have led to legitimizing the actions of the Department of Justice and thus a higher “approval” for the Justice Department’s actions. Or, was the higher justification based on the inclusion of the mention of U.S. antiterrorism efforts? Or, perhaps the difference is due to Pew using “the Justice Department” and the Washington Post/ABC News using “federal prosecutors.” We cannot begin to determine which part of the wording affected the responses. As the Pew Research Center said in its article comparing the results of these two surveys, “each polling organization made good-faith efforts to describe the facts of the situation as accurately as possible, but the word choices and context make it impossible to identify one particular phrase or concept that tipped the public?s thinking.”