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The article relates the concern about polling in the public's interest. Polling has become ubiquitous for a variety of reasons. Probably the most important is that the cost of data collection has declined and anyone can get into the game for a marginal investment. A second important factor was a set of business and editorial decisions by news organizations that they could produce their own data rather than accept the preprinted results from major national polling firms. By exercising independent judgments about newsworthy topics, writing their own questions, deciding on their field periods and conducting their own analyses and writing them up, these organizations satisfied a long-standing institutional desire for independent fact gathering and interpretation. Eventually, these decisions carried over to the development of the networks' exit poll operations and then to the consolidation of these efforts. The proliferation of polls presents a problem for citizens who are at one and the same time generally interested in public opinion and what their fellow citizens think and yet have almost no ability to differentiate good data from bad, useful information from useless or to understand why two polls might produce seemingly different results.

This article reports on the annual membership meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), held on My 19, 1989, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Retiring president Phil Meyer presided the meeting. President Meyer called the meeting to order. He announced that Chuck Cowan has expressed his intention to step down as Site Selection Committee chair. He introduced Karen Goldenberg, who has been selected as Associate Site Selection Committee chair by the Executive Council. Meyer reiterated the Council's interest in hearing from volunteers to serve on the committee. He then turned to various Council members for reports of their committees' activities during the past year. In reviewing budgetary matters discussed during the past year, three items were noted. A review had been undertaken of the relative costs of supplying services to foreign members: while the dues structure was not covering the full cost of all these memberships, the Council agreed to continue to provide a small net subsidy to this class of members. Second, a decision was made to invest nonworking AAPOR cash balances in conservative bond funds in order to obtain a higher rate of return than is available in checking accounts. Third, slight revisions will be made to current accounting procedures to reflect better the allocation of funds to projects that continue across multiple fiscal years, such as the allocations to cover the production and printing of the AAPOR history.