Public Opinion Research in Government

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.