Below you can find the questionnaire that is used to collect data on whether people agree or disagree with the assertion and how strong they support/oppose them.

The questionnaire below was used for all assertions that have been collected for the sixteen issues. While we give an example, you can find all assertions here.

Instructions

We want to better understand the controversial issue such as ‘Legalization of Marijuana’. In the following, we will confront you with assertions on ‘Legalization of Marijuana’, of which other people strongly believe that they are true. Your task is to judge these assertions based on whether you personally agree or disagree with them.

• Attempt these questions only if you are a fluent speaker of English.
• Your responses are confidential. Any publications based on these responses will not include your specific responses or any identifiable information, but rather aggregate information from many individuals.
• This task involves reading statements (or assertions) that reflect a broad set of views on controversial issues. Thus, some of the assertions may be offensive and/or use coarse language. The assertions do not reflect our personal views.

The Task

We want to better understand common controversial issues such as immigration and same-sex marriage. Therefore, we have collected a large amount of assertions relevant to these issues. Your task is to:

1. Indicate whether you agree or disagree with these assertions.
2. Indicate how strongly you support or oppose these assertions. Since it is difficult to give a numerical score indicating the degree of support or degree of opposition, we will give you four assertions at a time, and ask you to indicate to us:
   • Which of the assertions do you support the most (or oppose the least)?
   • Which of the assertion do you oppose the most (or support the least)?

If you support two assertions equally strongly, then select any one of them as the answer. The same applies for oppose.

Rules:

• Base your decision on the given statement only and do not include speculations on other opinions the author of the assertion might have.
• You may reject the issue as a whole, nevertheless there are possibly aspects of the issue on which you agree. Thus, carefully read every assertion.
• Rate all given statements, regardless of whether a statement seems to be irrelevant to an issue.