Response Latency

Response latency is the speed or ease with which a response to a survey question is given after a respondent is presented with the question. It is used as an indicator of attitude accessibility, which is the strength of the link between an attitude object and a respondent's evaluation of that object. While response latency has been used for some time in cognitive psychology lab experiments, its use in surveys came about more recently. In telephone surveys, response latency is measured in milliseconds as the elapsed time from when an interviewer finishes reading a question until a respondent begins to answer.

There are four stages that survey respondents use when answering questions: (1) question comprehension, (2) retrieval of information from memory, (3) integration of the information ...