Substance and Method in Public Opinion Quarterly, 1937–2010.

In POQ’s early years, survey data appeared only occasionally in articles and a focus on methodology was even less common. Today, by contrast, it is rare to find a POQ article that is not based on survey data, and many social scientists think of the journal as the leading forum for research on survey methodology. This sea change would have surprised the journal's founders and seems far from inevitable. An account of how and why the change occurred must answer at least two questions. First, what led a journal whose mandate was the study of public opinion in its widest sense to publish analyses based almost exclusively on sample surveys? Second, given the concentration on survey research, what led to an emphasis on methodology? This article focuses on the second question by examining the balance between substance and method over the journal's three-quarters of a century. It considers four kinds of evidence: the papers published in POQ; the POQ papers that have been the most influential; the POQ editors; and the authors who have appeared most often in POQ. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]