ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that some initial explanation of how theory synthesis can enrich understanding of the meaning of survey-response behaviour. Survey-response maximization allows one of the few areas of sociological research where experimental design as understood by writers such as Campbell and Stanley becomes feasible. When the method par excellence of behavioural psychology is employed, it can occasion small wonder if accompanying theorizing also becomes psychologized. The very terminology of 'subjects', 'respondents', 'interviewees', and 'cases' reveals much about the abstracted image of men and women implicit in survey research. Barnes performed a valuable corrective when he insisted that it is 'citizens' who are approached for cooperation in social research. Methodologists are not unaware that people may refuse surveys due to strongly held convictions, but they tend to dismiss the importance of such an interpretation because response behaviour is so elastic.
