The “Real Opinion” behind the Increasing “No Opinion” Responses Toward Police Perception Questions among American Adolescents

• In Event: Generational Change in Youth Behaviors and Attitudes: New Insights from the MTF Data, 1976–2019

Abstract

A longstanding concern of public opinion researchers is respondents’ choices of “don’t know (DK)” answers over substantive answers in surveys. In policing perception research, the most common practice is to treat DK responses as missing values. However, dropping the missing values may miss important pieces of information and skew the relationship between police perception and other variables, if patterns of missingness reflect certain attitudes from the respondents. Looking at patterns from the Monitoring the Future dataset from 1976-2019, we found an increasing proportion of youths reporting DK to questions on police perceptions. Teenagers who grew up in the past two decades are twice as likely to report DK responses compared to those who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis examines individual-level factors—such as socio-demographic characteristics, school engagement, region, and political attitudes—associated with the likelihood of selecting DK. We find that the influence of these factors on DK responses varies across cohorts. Notably, among the most recent cohorts, the rise in DK responses to questions about police perceptions is more prominent among specific population subgroups. Findings may contribute to our understanding of survey methodology as well as public opinion in policing research.

Author

• Luzi Shi, University of Rhode Island