ABSTRACT
The importance of the concepts of attitudes and opinions for empirically driven social sciences is hard to overrate. It is a common practice in social survey research to ask respondents about their opinions to determine their attitudes toward various objects. While most theoreticians agree on the multidimensional structure of attitudes (e.g., Manstead & Hewstone, 1995), survey methodologists often treat attitudes and answers to questions about opinions synonymously (e.g., Oppenheim, 2001; Tourangeau, Rips, & Rasinski, 2000). To avoid terminological confusion, I assume that survey questions directly measure opinions rather than attitudes. I use the common language meaning of the term opinion, assuming that an opinion is “a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty” (WordNet, 2007). If we define opinions this way, then they seem to be well measured by means of standardized survey questions. At the same time, there is no doubt that they are related to more complex attitudes.
