The Importance of House Effects for Repeated Public Opinion Surveys

Results of public opinion surveys on the same topic can diverge for various reasons, for example, different survey timings, different operationalizations of the objects of investigation, different target populations, or the fact that the surveys are conducted by different survey agencies (“houses”). The latter phenomenon is conventionally referred to as “house effects” (Smith, 1978, 1982, 2011; Weisberg, 2005), which can occur even if the survey agencies use identical question wordings or target populations (cf., Converse & Traugott, 1986; Erikson & Wlezien, 2001; Flores, 2015; Lau, 1994; Traugott, 2005; Wlezien & Erikson, 2007). However, although the existence of house-related differences in survey results has been well known in public opinion research since the two studies by Tom W. Smith from 1978 and 1982, respectively (Smith, 1978, 1982), little work has been done on the relevance of house...