Talk:Double-barreled question

Differentiation between this and loaded questions
This does a really poor job of differentiating these two concepts, if they are different at all. Richard001 (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * True; I have now proposed to merge this article into Loaded question. Cheers! bd2412  T 20:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree, they are different concepts. Non-legal equivalent of a compound question is Talk:Loaded_question (I just created the article on that) and perhaps those tho should be merged (if the legal use is not distinctive enough). See also discussion at Talk:Loaded_question. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Better example of a loaded question?
instead of "are you still beating your wife?", "have you stopped beating your wife?" would be a better question I think. If a person who does beat there wife and always has answers both questions there answers would be "yes" and "no", someone who used to but has stopped would answer "no" and "yes", and someone who never has would answer "no" and "no"...--76.23.48.213 (talk) 21:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Example Removal
I removed the example: "Have you told your parents that you're gay?" by 99.242.9.155. Technically this is not a compound question. The question does rest on the assumption that the person being asked is gay, but logically there is nothing explicit in the question to indicate this. If a person answered "No" to this question, two logical conclusions are possible: either the person is gay and has not told their parents so, or they are not gay and haven't told their parents otherwise. Jujutacular talkcontribs 22:25, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Error on this page?
The example compound question given is: "So instead of murdering your neighbour, did you go home and bake a pie which you donated to the Girl Scouts bake sale?"

Then this claim is made about it: "The question could not be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" without the witness implicitly confessing to the murder."

This seems just wrong (and there is no citation for what is given). How does answering "no" to this question involve confessing to the murder, "implicitly" or otherwise? If you answer "no" you're simply denying that the description given in the question obtains. How does denying that instead of murdering someone you did some other particular thing, imply that you murdered that person? It simply implies that it is not the case that you did that particular thing instead of murdering that person. There's an essentially infinite number of cases where this would obtain. You could have not murdered the person and played Call of Duty instead. You could have not murdered the person and had a Pastrami on rye instead. I could link to more articles, but I think the point is made.

I suggest changing the example or the claim. I'll wait and check back later to see if anyone wants to disagree with this before I change anything though. Atethnekos (talk) 15:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The next paragraph is hard to decipher as well. Is the example "Are you still beating your wife?" supposed to be taken as a combination of both "Are you currently beating your wife?" and "Have you ever beaten your wife?" or not? I would guess so, because I think a good meaning of the first question can be given as a combination of those two, as: "Have you ever beaten your wife and are you currently beating your wife?" But then the claim made about the combination, that it is "impossible for someone who has never beaten his wife to effectively answer the question, as phrased with a simple 'no'" is incorrect. This is because a simple "no" to this question would be a perfectly true and accurate answer from a person who has never beaten his wife. Atethnekos (talk) 16:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

1999 Australian referendum question
I removed anon's addition as it is unreferenced, and the sentence cited seems incomplete. Perhaps somebody can ref it and make it more clear? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:48, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The 1999 Australian referendum question proposed by royalist Prime Minister John Howard on becoming a republic was double-barrelled. Voters were asked to answer yes or no to the proposal; "To alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament." Such a question does not allow voters to vote for or against a republic, but asks in addition what kind of republic it should be. This question forced many republicans to vote against the proposal because they disagreed with the kind of republic being proposed. As a result the referendum was defeated.

Merge proposal
If the only difference between this and a compound question is the superficial context within which each is used, the articles ought to be merged. bd2412 T 02:04, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned on Talk:Loaded question, I'd prefer to hear from somebody with background in legal science before the merger. Yes, from what I have read, the only difference is context. Still, is it just the difference between mailman and postman, or is it more significant? See also Talk:Leading_question for a similar problem. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I happen to be an attorney, and I would say that, from a legal perspective, there is no real difference between the concepts. A compound question is simply one that is improper to ask because the witness may be unable to give a single answer addressing both parts. bd2412  T 22:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's helpful. Would you mind doing the mergers then? The legal aspect was the only one that was stopping me from supporting it; I have no objections now. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If there are no objections, I'll do it tomorrow evening. Cheers! bd2412  T 03:42, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Nope, please go ahead. Could I also interest you in commenting here? Similar issue. Thanks, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Done. bd2412 T 00:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

What about 'wu/mu'?
Aside from a large number of other concerns I have with the validity of the logic behind any of the claims made in this article I'd like to point out that it is not universally the case that this sort of question cannot be handled with a single word reply, as 'wu/mu' can be used here quite validly. So fundamentally the problem is not with the question, it is with the logic being applied to it. The article does not make this clear in any way, instead pointing at the structure of the question itself as the source of the fallacy. If we're confined to bivalent logic and a single word response then there is a fallacy built into the questions, but in reality this is not very often the case. People are typically permitted to explain, and if not then the real issue isn't with the question it's with the questioner's motives and intentions, and people are really never limited to strict bivalent logic. In my experience people generally have available to them an octavalent logic, including 'true', 'false', 'unknown', 'reportedly true', 'reportedly false', 'wu/mu', 'irrelevant' and 'nonsense'. It's just that western logical tradition dismisses the last three as consequences of malformed arguments, and 'reportedly true/false' as identical to 'true/false', with 'unknown' being a marginalized middle ground which still implies a proper answer of 'true' or 'false' but acknowledges that it may not be known which is the case. If this extended logic is applied then to these sorts of questions then serious doubt can be cast over the validity of basically everything stated in the article.

70.162.11.146 (talk) 03:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Wrong example?
One of the examples given is: "How often and how much time do you spend on each visit to a hospital?" This does not seem to be a double-barreled question because it is asking for two different kinds of information: duration which is indicated in hours/days/etc, and frequency as in "X times per [unit of time]". The unit would have to be indicated in the answer in order to be a complete sentence, i.e. "once per month for an hour". So a respondent can answer that question clear and unambiguously. 64.39.89.41 (talk) 17:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

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