Quantitative measurement of opinions

A definition offered by a specialist in polling is suggestive of the approach to public-opinion research of those who are primarily interested in measurement: “Public opinion consists of people’s reactions to definitely worded statements and questions under interview conditions” (Warner 1939, p. 377). Those focusing on measurement usually investigate such questions as the following: How widely (and, sometimes, how intensely) is a given opinion held? In which geographic, religious, ethnic, or socioeconomic sectors is the opinion encountered most frequently? With what other opinions is it most closely associated?

Measurement of opinions based on polling representative samples of larger populations came into prominence in the United States following the presidential election of 1936. At that time George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Archibald Crossley, then the most prominent exponents of the sample-survey method, correctly predicted the outcome, while the Literary Digest, relying on nearly 2.5 million unrepresentative straw ballots, was off by nearly twenty percentage points. Use of the sample-survey method spread rapidly thereafter and was scarcely affected by the failure of the principal polling organizations to pick the winner in the presidential election of 1948. This failure did, however, lead to important improvements in polling methods. (For a succinct description of polling procedures in recent election surveys, see Perry 1960.)

By 1965 public-opinion polling had spread throughout the world. The World Association for Public Opinion Research had members from more than forty countries, and numerous polling organizations were reported to be working in communist and other countries that were not represented in the association’s membership. The New York-based International Research Associates, headed by Elmo C. Wilson, had branch offices or affiliates in 34 countries, and the Gallup poll counted 32 affiliates and conducted frequent polls in nearly fifty countries. In the United States several hundred survey organizations existed on a national, state, or local level, with university research bureaus accounting for a substantial number of these.

Data gathered in the course of numerous surveys throughout the world are centralized in a number of “data banks,” the oldest of which is the Roper Public Opinion Research Center at Williams College. The Council of Social Science Data Archives, a cooperative organization of American university and non-profit research groups, helps to promote the exchange of these basic data for purposes of secondary analysis. Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research serves as a secretariat for the council. A selection of poll results from the United States appears in each issue of the Public Opinion Quarterly, and selected results from throughout the world are carried in Polls, a magazine published by Systemen Keesing in Amsterdam.

Quantitative studies have led to numerous generalizations about public opinion, most of which, however, do not hold for every time and place. One is that large numbers of people pay surprisingly little attention to political personalities and issues, even when these are featured by the mass media. For instance, in 1964 one out of four adult Americans did not know that there was a communist government on mainland China (Michigan, University of …1964). Polls taken since World War II in the United States have consistently shown that large proportions of the respondents were unaware of such crises as those of 1959 and 1961 in Berlin, or of 1955 in the Formosa Straits. As of 1959, 22 per cent of adult Americans said that they had not heard or read anything about Fidel Castro (Erskine 1963, pp. 661-662). Surveys conducted in western European countries have disclosed similar results: more people are familiar with the names of leading sports and entertainment figures than with all but the most prominent politicians. As of 1961, 95 per cent of rural Brazilians were unable to identify the president of the United States (Institute for International Social Research 1961, p. 3).

Stating the same proposition in another way, one can say that relatively small numbers of people regularly show a serious concern for public affairs. This has led some students to distinguish between the “general public,” the “attentive public” (which is at least aware of important issues), and the “informed public,” which participates in discussion of the issues (Almond [1950] 1960, p. 138). It has also led to the polling of “elites,” which are variously defined as being composed of those with a high degree of wealth, education, prominence, or influence. For example, numerous polls have been conducted using samples of legislators, businessmen, or those listed in Who’s Who.

The other side of the coin is that people are likely to be most concerned with matters that they see as affecting them directly. A survey of the principal worries of adult Americans found that 80 per cent of the respondents answered solely in terms of personal and family problems; only 6 to 8 per cent mentioned national or world problems, including war, as being among the things they worried about most, in spite of the fact that the survey was conducted during a period when there was an active atomic-arms race with the Soviet Union (Stouffer 1955). Another study, using cross sections in more than twenty countries throughout the world—including several commun^Jst countries and developing countries—found a similar pattern of concerns, although with important national variations (Cantril 1966).

Nor is it a simple matter to raise the level of information about public issues (Hyman & Sheats-ley 1947). Repeated experiments and observations in several countries have indicated that people have a remarkable ability to ignore easily available facts when these facts are of little interest to them. Merely increasing the amount of information available will not necessarily increase public knowledge, although this generalization probably will not hold true in developing areas where there is a strong unfulfilled demand for more mass media. What seems to be the case is that a proportion of each population, ranging from a very small group up to about two-thirds of the adults, experiences a need for at least some information on matters of public concern. Once the needs of these people have been satisfied, further information flows over the population like water over a saturated sponge.

Opinion measurement has also disclosed strong correlations between educational, religious, geographic, socioeconomic, and ethnic factors, on the one hand, and the opinions that people hold on political subjects, on the other. Indeed, in several areas of the United States it has been found that a person’s voting behavior can be predicted with considerable reliabihty if information is available about his socioeconomic status, his place of residence (urban or rural), and his religious or ethnic background (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944, p. 26). In general, political interest and activity are greater among upper socioeconomic and educational levels, men, middle-aged groups, and urban residents than among lower socioeconomic and educational levels, women, older and younger adults, and rural residents (ibid., pp. 42-51). A number of surveys have also found a relationship between political opinions and personality factors—although this relationship has usually been weaker and more difficult to document satisfactorily.

A final example of the kind of generalization that can be developed through quantitative measurement is that people tend to adjust their opinions to conform to the situation in which they find themselves. During racial integration of schools in the United States, for instance, public opinion in the areas affected tended to become more favorable toward integration following, rather than before, the action of school authorities to admit Negroes to formerly all-white schools (Hyman & Sheatsley 1964). Similarly, the attitudes that the people of two nations have toward each other are likely to result from the state of relations between their governments, as well as being a cause of good or bad relations (Buchanan & Cantril 1953).