Summary It is well known that responses to an opinion question can be influenced by the precise format and wording of the question. This paper reviews published research in two broad areas of question design: the effects of offering different response options, and the effects of response order and the context of the question. Results from a recent experiment provide further examples of question wording effects on both the marginal distributions of responses and the pattern of associations between questionnaire items.

There has been extensive research on Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism but little on British nationalism. Analysis of the British electorate shows that British nationalist sentiments cannot be reduced to the conventional left-right and libertarian-authoritarian value dimensions, and constitute a distinct normative dimension in their own right. They are related to attitudes towards Europe, nuclear defence, Scottish devolution and Irish unification. Although by no means as important as the left-right dimension, they are at least as important in contemporary voting behaviour as the libertarian-authoritarian dimension.Nationalism has been one of the major driving forces behind twentieth-century European politics but has received rather little attention in England, where debates have more often focused on the role of class or other economic interests. The implicit assumption is that Britain, or at any rate England, can be characterized by a consensus on national identity and that nationalism has played little part in electoral politics. The relative lack of success of parties like the National Front or the British National Party compared with their European counterparts has perhaps reinforced this impression.There have been empirical studies of the role played by nationalism or national identity in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. 1 But as far as we know there * The Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends, SCPR (Brook and Park) and Nuffield College, Oxford (Heath and Taylor). We gratefully acknowledge the support of our colleagues in CREST and of the ESRC (grant M303 253 001) which funded this research. We would also like to thank David Sanders, James Kellas and the anonymous referees of the Journal for their helpful comments.

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