If you’ve been paying attention to the polls lately, you’ve probably noticed some unsettling conclusions about the ranks of Americans who say political violence is justified or they’re willing to support the use of force for political ends.

The problem, according to one Ohio State political science professor? They’re wrong.

And that has a lot to do with the way the questions are being asked, Ryan Kennedy , the university’s Timashev Chair of Data Analytics, wrote in a recent analysis for the public policy site The Conversation .

In Pollingese, the culprit is something known as a “response error,” which means respondents end up interpreting a question differently from the way that researchers think they will.

As a result, the answers that researchers get "don’t really reflect wha

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