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We report the results of a national survey conducted to help public health officials understand the public's response to community mitigation interventions for a severe outbreak of pandemic influenza. Survey [...]

Many Americans have misconceptions about smallpox and the smallpox vaccine, according to a survey of 1,006 people. Most believed there was an effective treatment for smallpox and that there was not enough vaccine to vaccinate every American. They also thought they would be protected if they had been vaccinated early in life.

Faced with increased diversification of methodologies in the polling industry, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Center is embarking on a major initiative aimed at increasing methodological transparency across the field of public opinion survey research by increasing minimum disclosure requirements and providing users with transparency scoring for new submissions to the archive. Roper Center, the world's largest archive of public opinion survey data, has long enforced disclosure requirements for archival submissions based on transparency standards developed by professional organizations in the polling industry, particularly the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Roper Center's new requirements and scoring mechanism expand longstanding policies and procedures to better meet the challenges of today's research environment. In this paper, Roper Center's new standards will be described in the context of the historical development of transparency expectations in the polling community. The paper will also detail the implementation process, providing an account of how standards were translated into actionable DDI-based metadata to drive an automatic scoring system, how new workflows were developed with input from data providers to facilitate maximum disclosure, and how the display of the user interface was designed to ensure the transparency information can be easily viewed and understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the Editor: Blendon et al. (1) described a survey of public attitudes regarding Americans' willingness and ability to follow the advice of public health officials during a severe influenza [...]

The objective of this paper is to understand how the public's beliefs in five countries may change as more families have direct experience with Alzheimer's disease. The data are derived from a questionnaire survey conducted by telephone (landline and cell) with 2678 randomly selected adults in France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United States. The paper analyzes the beliefs and anticipated behavior of those in each country who report having had a family member with Alzheimer's disease versus those who do not. In one or more countries, differences were found between the two groups in their concern about getting Alzheimer's disease, knowledge that the disease is fatal, awareness of certain symptoms, and support for increased public spending. The results suggest that as more people have experience with a family member who has Alzheimer's disease, the public will generally become more concerned about Alzheimer's disease and more likely to recognize that Alzheimer's disease is a fatal disease. The findings suggest that other beliefs may only be affected if there are future major educational campaigns about the disease. The publics in individual countries, with differing cultures and health systems, are likely to respond in different ways as more families have experience with Alzheimer's disease.

Results from a national survey indicated that most persons would follow public health officials’ guidelines. We report the results of a national survey conducted to help public health officials understand the public’s response to community mitigation interventions for a severe outbreak of pandemic influenza. Survey results suggest that if community mitigation measures are instituted, most respondents would comply with recommendations but would be challenged to do so if their income or job were severely compromised. The results also indicate that community mitigation measures could cause problems for persons with lower incomes and for racial and ethnic minorities. Twenty-four percent of respondents said that they would not have anyone available to take care of them if they became sick with pandemic influenza. Given these results, planning and public engagement will be needed to encourage the public to be prepared.