Abstract

ABSTRACT Critics of Converse’s agenda‐setting 1964 essay underexplored the seemingly technical issue of measurement error. Down this road not taken lie serious questions about the evidence for both of Converse’s main theses. First, a thorough reexamination of the exact questions posed to a mass sample of the electorate and to an elite sample of congressional candidates suggests that the mass/elite difference in ideological constraint reported by Converse could be, in significant part, a measurement‐error artifact caused by differences in question form. Furthermore, the vagueness and ambiguity of the questions not only calls into question the plausibility of Converse’s main thesis—lack of ideological constraint among the public—but of his subsidiary thesis: that, measured over time, members of the public had such unstable political opinions that they might best be considered “nonattitudes.”