Describes a split-ballot experiment that varied the order of general and specific questions and the position of an open-ended question. 913 adults from Oregon and 786 from Idaho were interviewed by telephone. Responses to a question about the state economy changed when the question followed a similar item about the economy of the S's local community. Overall distribution of the answers changed, as well as the correlation between the 2 items. Prior work (e.g., N. Schwarz et al; see record 1991-23777-001) has suggested that Ss may exclude specific aspects of a general issue from consideration when a question about the general issue follows a question about the specific aspect of it. Responses to an open-ended item indicate that Ss may have excluded a salient characteristic of the community economy when subsequently assessing the state economy, even though this characteristic figured prominently when Ss evaluated the state economy first. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)