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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.

The author reflects on the points of Kurt Lang in his work on the function of public opinion polls. He views on the issues which were not expressed but applicable to the discussion engendered by Lang. Also, the author examines the representativeness of the expressions of public opinion, and its representation in policy or legislation.

This study leverages a survey experiment in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election to evaluate how partisan biases, poll results, and their methodological quality interact to shape people's assessments of polling accuracy and electoral expectations. In a nationally representative sample, we find that individuals disproportionately find polls more credible when their preferred candidate is leading. Partisan biases are mitigated when the polls themselves vary in objective indicators of quality: while more educated respondents are more likely to identify high-quality polls accurately, low education respondents' bias was reduced when they encountered polls with varying methodological quality. Finally, these moderators influence respondents' electoral expectations as well. We discuss the implications for journalistic coverage of polls, public opinion, and political polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the reliability of polls in general in op-eds. How do Americans evaluate polls when they come accompanied with such commentaries? Building on evidence that individuals perceive polls in biased ways, this study examines whether and how individuals react to pundit commentary and whether such commentary can increase or decrease partisan bias in evaluations. In a nationally representative survey experiment fielded during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we exposed 2,078 individuals to news stories about polls that included various expert or partisan comments. Although commentaries shifted perceptions of the polls, they did little to mitigate or amplify news readers' biases. We conclude that poll commentary is not an effective tool for mitigating bias. Implications for public perceptions, corrective attempts against biased processing of statistical information in news reports, and journalistic coverage at large are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various topics published within the issue including an article on the accuracy of pre-election estimates of election outcomes and an article about public opinion of scientific issues.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Peter Neijens and Philip van Praag on the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referenda in the Netherlands and another by Vincent Price and Natalie Jomini Stroud on the research of public attitudes toward polls in the U.S.

The article provides an overview of the articles published in the June 2006 issue of the "International Journal of Public Opinion." An article by Patricia Moy looks for priming rather than agenda-setting side effects, that is people's use of features of media coverage for their own decisions. The experience of Norwegian researchers made with telephone panels as an alternative to exit polls on election day is also related. The authors establish an appearance of then president candidate George W. Bush on the television program "The David Letterman Show," changed the criteria viewers used when making decisions on whom to vote for.

Electronic voting systems were developed, in part, to make voting easier and to boost voters' confidence in the election process. Using three new approaches to studying electronic voting systems--focusing on a large-scale field study of the usability of a representative set of systems--we demonstrate that voters view these systems favorably but that design differences have a substantial impact on voters' satisfaction with the voting process and on the need to request help. Factors associated with the digital divide played only a small role with respect to overall satisfaction but they were strongly associated with feeling the need for help. Results suggest numerous possible improvements in electronic voting systems as well as the need for continued analysis that assesses specific characteristics of both optical scan and direct recording electronic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the March 2005 issue of the "International Journal of Public Opinion Research."

Presents the author's views on the journal "International Journal of Public Opinion Research." Information that according to scholar Edmund Lauf the journal is the most international mass communication journal among more than 40 communication journals; Article on an interesting historical review of a part of sociologist Robert Merton's work related to communication research; Views on other articles published in the journal.

Presents an introduction to various articles published in the December 2004 issue of "International Journal of Public Opinion Research."