Question wording matters in measuring frequency of fear of crime: A survey experiment of the anchoring effect

We conducted a survey experiment to test the effect of question wording on reported frequency of fear of crime. Participants were randomly assigned to report the number of times they felt fearful of crime within either the past 12 months, a typical month, or a typical week. There was also a fourth condition that asked a forced-choice question with many response options. They also reported the intensity of their most recent instance. We used Qualtrics Panels to recruit an online sample (N = 561) of US adults nationwide. Responses were collected during January 2023. The only eligibility criteria for the survey were that participants must be at least 18 years old and must speak fluent English. A correct answer to the attention check (“Select ‘untrue for me’ for this question”) was required; participants who did not pass this attention check were removed by Qualtrics before we received the data.