What is "question Framing"?

Question

I am writing an analisys paper on an article and i am supposed to identify some fallacies in the question framing. What the heck is question framing, and what would be some fallacies of it?

Answer 1

Framing the question is just the way to ask a question.  The best way to explain is by example.  If I was trying to solve a math problem and I wanted to ask for your help there are several ways I could ask:

"Could you help me with my math?"

"Could you help me with algerbra?"

"How do you factor?"

"How do you solve expressions?"

"What is x when x^2 + 2x - 24 = 0 ?"

All of these questions are asking for help but some are framed in better ways to get better, more accurate answers.

However, some ways of framing are designed in a way to get an answer that the person wants.  For instance take the questions:

"Who do you want Obama or McCain to be America's next President?"

"Do you want someone with more experience or less experience to be the next president?"

"Do you want the next President to be someone who wants the Iraq war to end or someone who wants it to continue?"

These are three questions about the same thing just framed differently.  The first one is more fair and balanced.  The second question is phrased/slanted in such a way to get the person to support McCain.  The third question is phrased/slanted in such a way to get the person to support Obama.

So, how the question is framed can determine the response.  Questions like:

"Are you pro-life?"  or

"Are you pro-choice?"

are similar.  Pro-life sounds like a good postion, no many people want to see death.  Pro-choice sounds like a good postion also.  Most people like having choices.

The fallacies are that the questions are not framed in a way to generate an unbiased, genuine answer.  Framing a question is a way to distort, twist, and influence the answer.  This basically defeats the point of asking the question.  You should ask a question to get a genuine, unbiased answer.  Frequently, political polls have framed questions and are done this way to get answers to questions.