Excerpt:
In a famous Yes, Prime Minister episode Sir Humphrey Appleby once explained to Bernard Woolley how you could get contradictory polling results on the same topic – in this case the reintroduction of national service – by asking a series of leading questions beforehand and asking the key question you want to know about in a certain way. The clip is here.
But what would happen if we asked Sir Humphrey's questions today? To find out we asked 1,000 British adults the first set of questions that were positive about national service and 1,000 British adults the second set that were negative. Below is a comparison of the results. You can see that it is indeed true that you get different results on the level of support for the reintroduction of national service based on the way you ask the question and the questions you ask before it.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/yes-prime-minister-questionnaire-design-matters
