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Public Opinion Research in Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Harold F. Gosnell  and
Moyca C. David
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Extract

The actual use of polling techniques by the federal government falls far short of what one eminent social scientist, Julian L. Woodward, foresees for the future. He says: “Sooner or later, the government itself will have to go into the polling field and provide both its administrators and its legislators with adequate and sound information on what the public thinks. Eventually this sort of information will become as necessary as census data and will be provided by an agency with a reputation for unbiased research equal to that now enjoyed by the present Census Bureau.”

While the potentialities of public opinion research in the government have only begun to be exploited, administrators and even legislators, who characteristically have been more hostile toward polling, have found methods of testing public opinion answerable to their needs. In accord with their purposes, they have used public opinion surveys to sample a small group of leaders, a large group, or the total population. They have been concerned also with content analysis of the press and of radio programs. The usefulness of attitude surveys was established particularly during the war and has continued since in a somewhat lesser degree.

Type
Instruction and Research
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 564 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1949

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References

1 Woodward, J. L., “Public Opinion Polls as an Aid to Democracy,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 61, p. 245 (June, 1945)Google Scholar.

2 Kriesberg, Martin, “What Congressmen and Administrators Think of the Polls,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 10, p. 333 (Fall, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Hauser, P. M. and Hansen, M. H., “Sample Surveys in Census Work,” in Blankenship, Albert B. (ed.), How to Conduct Consumer and Opinion Research (New York, 1936), 251–258Google Scholar; Sampling Staff, Bureau of the Census, A Chapter in Population Sampling (Washington, D. C., 1947)Google Scholar.

4 MacNemar, Quinn, “Opinion Attitude Methodology,” Psychological Bulletin (July, 1946)Google Scholar; Guttman, Louis, “Basis for Scaling Qualitative Data,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 10, pp. 139–150 (Apr., 1944)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Scott, Hans E., “Attitude Research in the Department of Agriculture,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 7, p. 287 (Summer, 1943)Google Scholar, describes the methods as follows: “The major methodological problems, in brief, have been (1) to develop sampling methods which would give a truly representative miniature of the total population; (2) to tap complete and trustworthy expressions of attitudes toward specific topics or issues, and to secure such reactions in a uniform, reliable way from all people interviewed in so far as this was possible; and (3) to devise methods of analysis which would permit quantitative treatment of the data, and yet which would preserve the context of the rich narrative material.

6 Smith, Bruce L., Lasswell, H. D., and Casey, R. D., Propaganda Communication and Public Opinion; A Comprehensive Reference Guide (Princeton, 1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lasswell, H. D. et al. , “The Politically Significant Content of the Press; Coding Procedures,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 19 (Mar., 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Geller, D. Kaplan, and H. D. Lasswell, “An Experimental Comparison of Four Ways of Coding Editorial Content,” ibid.

7 United States v. George Sylvester Viereck, 130 Fed. 2nd 945, Sept., 1942, reversed by Supreme Court, 317 U.S. 618; United States v. William Dudley Pelley, 132 Fed. 2nd 170, confirmed by Supreme Court Feb. 15, 1943, 317 U.S. 5.

8 Comment of one of the outstanding men in the field of market research.

9 U. S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on Supplemental National Defense Appropriation, 1943, p. 387Google Scholar.

10 U. S. Congress, House, Hearings on the Supplemental National Defense Appropriation, 1943Google Scholar, Committee on Appropriations, 380–381, gave an estimate of $871,390 for the 369 employees as of June 30, 1943. Other obligations of the Bureau were $878,912, making a total of $1,750,302.

11 Interview.

12 Herzog, Elizabeth G., “Pending Perfection; A Qualitative Complement to Quantitative Methods,” International Journal of Opinion and Altitude Research (Sept., 1947)Google Scholar.

13 Woodward, J. L., “Making Government Opinion Research Bear Upon Operations,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 9, pp. 670–677 (1944)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Executive Order 9809, Dec. 13, 1946.

14a Public Law 269, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 1947.

15 Campbell, Angus, “The Uses of Interview Surveys in Federal Administration,” Journal of Social Issues, May, 1946, p. 14–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; W. A. Nielsen, “Attitude Research and Government,” ibid., pp. 2–13.

16 “Survey on Business Expectations and Governmental Policies,” prepared by Dun and Bradstreet, Inc., for the Joint Committee on the Economic Report, May 23, 1947.

17 Release from Sen. Homer Ferguson's office, Jan. 26, 1948.

18 U. S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on the State Department Appropriations Bill, 1947, p. 69Google Scholar; U. S. Congress, ibid., 1948, p. 200; Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Task Force Report on Foreign Affairs (Washington, D. C., 1949), p. 80Google Scholar.

19 “Women's Preferences Among Selected Textile Products,” U. S. Dept. of Agric., Misc. Publication No. 641, Dec. 1947. (Two surveys on the use of potatoes have not been published.)

20 “National Survey of Liquid Asset Holdings, Spending, and Saving,” a Survey Conducted for the Federal Reserve Board by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Dept. of Agric., Washington, D. C., published in three parts, June, July, and August, 1946.