Which questions do people tend to respond “Don’t know” to?

On surveys, sometimes the questions asked are hard for some people to answer. As a result, the answer option “Don’t know” is a regular part of any survey dataset. But are some questions particularly likely to elicit these responses? This blog post uses un-weighted 2017 CRRC Caucasus Barometer (CB) survey data for Georgia to look at this question.

The ten CB 2017 questions with the highest share of “Don’t know” answers are provided on the chart below.


Two patterns are present in the CB 2017 questions that people responded “Don’t know” to most often. First, unsurprisingly, the shares of “Don’t know” answers are higher to questions that it is reasonable to think a person would be uncertain about. Second, while only about one in five questions on the CB questionnaire aimed to measure political or economic attitudes, most of the questions in the top ten are such questions.

To have a closer look at the data used in this blog post, visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis portal.