Use of Public Opinion Research
Public Opinion Research – or Survey Research, as it is also referred to – is a common tool use in different areas of professional and strategic communication:
- Political Communication
- Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising
- Journalism
Polls versus Surveys
A basic distinction to start: public opinion polls vs public opinion surveys.
Opinion Polls: The questionnaire is short, and the questions are generally more direct. Interviewees have only multiple choice options.
Example: What political party do you intend to vote in the next election? What party did you vote in the last presidential election?
Surveys: More in depth information is searched for. Several questions in the questionnaire are used to find the answer to the research questions. Surveys include a broader variety of questions formats: scales, ordinal, numerical, and categorical questions, or even open-ended questions.
Example: Rating the satisfaction of consumers with products or services. Exploring the attitude of the population toward moral issues. Evaluating the quality of your course.
Empirical Social Sciences
At this point of your studies you should be familiar with the meaning of the adjective empirical (based on scientific experimentation).
Empirical methodologies are based on the epistemological assumption that we can only considered true knowledge what is the result of scientific experimentation. Only when we are sure that, under the same circumstances, we are going to obtain the same results, we can call it true knowledge.
In social sciences, empirical methodologies started with the use of the so-called Moral statistics: Illegitimate children, criminal behaviors, violent deaths, poverty, mental health, abortions, divorces, …
The pioneer in this field was the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. He coined the term “social” or “collective streams”, which will be very useful for this course on public opinion.
His most important work is
“Le Suicide: Etude de Sociologie” (1897)
With the use of moral statistics, he showed how even such an extreme behavior – the suicide – can become an object for social streams, or, if we prefer the term, a fashion.
Social streams do not depend on individuals, they regularly happen though generations. Individuals are simply exchangeable.
The question that arises reading Durkheim is:
Is the human free will an essential part of the human nature or just a myth?
We can speculate about it, but do not expect to find an answer in this course.
In public opinion research we will not talk in terms of true or false, right or wrong, but in statistical degrees of probability.
Statistical Significance
The term statistical significance precisely relates to those degrees of probability.
Significance, in statistical analyses is simple the degree of confidence that our outcomes are not due to chance.
Statistical significance is normally determine by two factors: sample size and sample structure.
In a representative sample, the structure of the sample reflects the structure of the target population.
It is important, then, to think in terms of demographic or statistic characteristics, to break down our target population on the basis of such features as gender, age, income, level of education, profession, race or ethnicity, to mention just a few.
We assess the quality of our outcomes in terms of validity and reliability.
Validity expresses to what extent we are measuring what we were supposed to measure.
Reliability refers to the level of confidence that we have that the outcomes of our sample can be applied to the entire target population.
Ethical Standards
Survey research methodologies are used in difference disciplines, such as sociology, psychology or communication science.
Since we deal with human subjects, there are some ethical standards every research must be aware of and should abide with. For the purpose of these course, the most relevant area of these ethical standards refers to how we treat the participants in our research projects. Still, the code of ethics also approaches the way we deal with clients and sponsors or with other researches, as well as how researchers should manage the data gathered in the project.
Every institution that develops research projects involving the participation of human subjects will have an IRB (Institutional Review Board). This agency reviews each single project to make sure that it follows the ethical standards protocols. This is the link to our IRB.
I am copying in this learning unit the rules of practice between researcher and respondents of the WAPOR (World Association for Public Opinion Research). In this link, you will find the complete code of ethics of this organization.
WAPOR’s Code of Ethics
RULES OF PRACTICE BETWEEN RESEARCHER AND RESPONDENTS
D. Responsibility to Informants
22. No informant, respondent or other research participant must be adversely affected as a result of his/her answers or of the research process. The researcher shall respect respondent’s decisions about their participation in the research and use no methods or techniques by which the informant is put in the position that s/he cannot exercise his/her right to withdraw or refuse his/her answers at any stage of the research.
23. Researchers shall respect the need of informants, respondents or others participating in the research for privacy, confidentiality and data protection.
24. No response in a survey or other research finding shall be linked in any way to an identifiable respondent. Respondents must remain unidentified, except in rare cases, with the respondent’s specific permission and provided that it is not ruled out by national law. The researcher must take measures to prevent deductive disclosure.
25. The interview method or any other method employed by the researcher must never be used as a disguise for other purposes such as marketing, sales solicitation, fundraising or political campaigning.
E. For Interviewers
26. Research assignments and materials received, as well as all information from respondents, shall be held in confidence by the interviewer and revealed to no one except the research organization conducting the study.
27. No information gained through a research activity shall be used, directly or indirectly, for the personal gain or advantage of the interviewer in his/her relations with the respondents.
28. The research shall be conducted in strict accordance with specifications. No interviewer shall carry out more than one assignment in contact with the same respondents unless this is authorized by the research organization and its clients.
Informed Consent
You should always start your survey with an “informed consent statement”.
In statement, you inform your interviewees about the purpose and procedure of the study, the possible risks and benefits of participating in it, and all the efforts you are taking to keep the confidentiality.
It is is also important to mention that the participation is completely voluntary, and that the interviewee can interrupt it any time without any consequences.
In this link, you can find a template of informed consent statement you can adapt to your survey.
Public Opinion Structure
Nieburg, Harold L; “Public Opinion. Tracking and Targeting”; Praeger, 1984
Mainstream:
Most universal bin
This is the audience for all common events:
the assassination of president Kennedy,
the World Series,
the Superbowl,
or blockbuster movies like ET, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, etc..
Mainstream Variations
This is the breakdown of the general mainstream into some of its important subclasses.
Age: preteen (12 to 15); youth (15 to 21); young adult (19 to 30), midadult 30 to 49); older midadult (50 to 70); and aged adult (above 70)
Socioeconomic Status
Cultural Status
Ethnic Groups
Religious Groups
Urban / Suburban / Rural
Status Cultures
Although parts of the mainstream, these publics make their central concern an attack on the mainstream.
“Formal” High Culture Gurus
Artists with capital “A”
Avant–garde in every field
But also “Underground Cultures”, people who deliberately want to shock and to offend mainstreamers with outrageous or disgusting tastes.
Special Subcultures
Groups of numerous members engaged in specialized activities.
Professional groups such as
doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, etc…
Voluntary or recreational activities such as
hunting, fishing, furniture refinishing, body-building, gardening, etc…