Question context effect
The question context effect (also: sequence effect , question series effect or position effect ) is a special distortion in empirical social research in which the order of the question asked in a questionnaire has an influence on the interpretation and evaluation of the questions by the respondent.
The answer to a question can be significantly influenced by the preceding questions. It is therefore a systematic distortion. In order to identify such a question context effect, the order of the questions in the pretest or in a split ballot ( split questionnaire) can be varied. However, this also increases the effort involved in constructing the questionnaire.
In order to vary the order of items within a question, techniques of item rotation and randomization are used .