Abstract:

Monotony and its side-effects have been dealt with in other areas. But monotony is powerful enough to adulterate the results. Noelle Neumann proved that the influence of monotony was visible even in simple inquiries, for example when ascertaining readership figures of daily newspapers. If the questionnaire was dreary, fewer respondents than before admitted that they read the various newspapers, as opposed to results obtained by a questionnaire design that instigated the respondent's activity. In the course of evaluating secondary empirical data at the Institut flir Demoskopie Allensbach my attention was drawn to the subject of monotony and its effects from another angle.