Background and Rationale for the Public Pulse
The Public Pulse provides an evidence-based, non-partisan, systematic synthesis of public opinion on the key policy issues shaping legislative action, public policy decisions and journalistic debate.
The Public Pulse is an initiative of and supported by the Stanford Institute for Excellence in Survey Research (SIESR) and the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS).
The Public Pulse is scientific, transparent, neutral, ongoing, and open source. The Public Pulse will not commission primary research, instead using the existing cascade of surveys on key policy areas which are already published and in the public domain. The Public Pulse will focus exclusively on survey research in the U.S.
Each Public Pulse report follows a standardized format, using a prescribed set of criteria for. These reports provide an accessible summary statement of where public opinion stands on each topic, accompanied by an evaluation of the availability of data on each topic, overall confidence in the ability of the data to accurately reflect public opinion, the impact of question wording on interpretations of public opinion on the topic, and trends over time.
The process of developing the Public Pulse reviews and syntheses involves a series of sequential steps executed by staff members with oversight by the Public Pulse Board of Advisors: curation of existing survey research on key policy issues, evaluation and selection of results based on the quality of the underlying methods and procedures, analysis of question wording and other structural features of the survey, and a synthesis and distillation of what the results indicate.
Public Pulse reports will be published on a dedicated website designed for clarity, accessibility and ease of use.
The length of each Public Pulse review/synthesis will vary depending on the breadth and depth of available research on the topic. The Public Pulse reports on key policies will be revised on a continuing basis based on the availability of new data.
Rationale for the Public Pulse
The rationale for the Public Pulse centers on the conviction that public opinion is a key component of our representative democracy and a critical accompaniment to the system of elected representatives that form the operating basis of the U.S. government. Leaders, elected officials, journalists, and the general public need to be able to access and understand the broad contours of the views of the country’s population. This broad understanding of the population taken as a whole is particularly important in a highly polarized environment in which small groups of primary voters often determine election outcomes, and in which isolated media and online bubbles increasingly focus on narrow ideological viewpoints and selective information.
Survey research is our primary mechanism for measuring public opinion.
Survey research in the U.S. faces significant challenges. There are more surveys of public opinion than ever before. But the underlying quality of surveys producing poll results is highly variable. Poll results on any given topic are affected by question wording, context, methodology, and other structural factors.
Survey results are often reported in a haphazard way without evaluation or vetting. Survey results are often selectively used to support pre-existing positions or arguments. Survey results are reported as if all surveys are equally valid and reliable. Survey results on any one topic are frequently reported in isolation without comparison and contrast to other results on the same topic.
There are pressing concerns about survey methodology. Traditional methods with proven validity have become more difficult and more expensive. Non-traditional methods with unproven validity have increasingly lower barriers to entry and have thus become increasingly prevalent.
And, even with an assumption of methodological quality, survey results can vary based on question wording and survey context, leading to conflicting assumptions or conclusions about public opinion on a given topic. Survey results on a given topic can also reflect widely differing levels of knowledge about the topic.
Efforts to understand public opinion are thus at a significant inflection point. The way things are done now is not acceptable. The need for neutral, scientific reviews, evaluations, and syntheses of public opinion across multiple surveys measuring where the public stands on key issues has never been more evident.
The Public Pulse is an aggressive initiative to address this situation, facilitating the use of survey-based measures of public opinion by leaders, elected representatives, journalists and others involved with the process of policymaking and policy implementation. The Public Pulse allows interested leaders to access an understandable and accessible summary of public opinion on specific topics. The Public Pulse thus provides the American people with an enhanced voice in the decisions that affect their daily lives. In short.
Background
Previous research conducted for the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found widespread support for the Public Pulse concept from pollsters, social scientists, public policy experts and journalists—including endorsements from 11 past presidents of AAPOR and, among others, those who lead Monmouth, Quinnipiac, Marist, Iowa, AP NORC, Pew, Gallup, and other survey research endeavors.
AAPOR commissioned a special task force looking into the relationship between “Polling and Democracy”, resulting in a comprehensive and in-depth report published in 2013.
This report included the following conclusions which help provide background and rationale for the Public Pulse:
Survey research measuring public opinion and self-reported behaviors provides a number of functions in society. One of these is its value in fostering democracy and improving the way in which the U.S. system of government operates. In a highly polarized environment in which fewer and fewer voters can determine large percentages of elected officials, it is more important than ever […] to take the position that leaders and elected officials need to be able to access and understand public opinion.
The importance of this objective should be self-evident. Understanding the various viewpoints and overall judgments on the role of public opinion in decision making enables researchers to continue to collect and analyze public opinion data with greater clarity about its purpose. Ensuring better use of public opinion data helps fulfill the [polling] profession’s major objective.
Public opinion, it has been argued over the years, is potentially a very important, vital and rich contribution to decision-making and policy guidance in society...
Specifically:
- Empirically and philosophically, the opinions of citizens have and should have visible influence on decision making in society, though this is not ultimate or exclusive power.
- An extensive research literature shows noticeable responsiveness and congruence between public opinion and policy decisions, indicating that basic democratic processes are at work. The relationship is complex, however, and leaders are far from largely influenced by the mass public.
- The American public has expressed low confidence in their leaders and Congress and government in general. The public wants leaders to pay more attention to the public’s opinions in making decisions and formulating policy.
- Leaders themselves generally claim that they do pay attention to public opinion, claim that they become aware of public opinion in many ways, but seem to be leery of appearing to rely too closely on “the polls” or other information about public opinion that are available to them.
- The process by which public opinion data can be accessed in a meaningful and expeditious way by leaders and others who would or should use such data is unsystematic, incomplete, and beset by significant shortcomings and difficulties.
- Decision-making and democratic processes will be enhanced if these shortcomings and difficulties are addressed, and if data summarizing public opinion on the key policy issues of the day are made available in ways that improve their accessibility and their usability.
The views of the citizens of a country or other political entity whose political system involves a representative democratic framework are made available when they vote in local and national elections—to the extent that a subset of the population votes up or down on the performance or projected performance of their representatives.
It is difficult to disagree, however, that elected representatives benefit by availing themselves of knowledge of the attitudes, views on policy, and assessments of problems and priorities of the public. Making the voice of the people more systematically available is particularly important in today’s environment when (a) organized groups with money play a major role in efforts to influence elections and policy decisions (b) the governing apparatus is held in such low esteem, and (c) the voice of the people is sometimes assessed through haphazard mechanisms such as social media, and often tendentiously characterized by ideologues on all sides of the political spectrum.
Without knowing where the public stands, political leaders and policymakers are working in the dark, missing out on the tremendous power of the wisdom inherent in the collected opinions of the citizens of a country, and they increase the chances of an alienated and disenchanted citizenry and thus a poorly functioning political entity. While polling data do not provide a blueprint for action, they can inform leaders as to where the public or electorate to which they are accountable stands at a given point in time, under the assumption that leaders’ awareness of this information will result in better outcomes than if these leaders are only able to make haphazard or ill-informed estimates of public opinion.
The process by which public opinion data can be accessed in a meaningful and expeditious way by leaders and others who would or should use such data is unsystematic, incomplete, and beset by significant shortcomings and difficulties.
Decision-making and democratic processes will be enhanced if these shortcomings and difficulties are addressed, and if data summarizing public opinion on the key policy issues of the day are made available in ways that improve their accessibility and their usability.
And further: “There are many philosophic positions which can be taken in regard to the optimal way to govern in a representative democracy. This Task Force Report recommends that AAPOR should take the position that leaders’ ability to use information about public opinion is constructive to decision- making processes and democracy, and that AAPOR should act to facilitate this process. This recommendation recognizes significant diversity of opinion—within members of this Task Force, presumably within AAPOR membership, and certainly in the world at large -- concerning the degree to which leaders should follow public opinion in making decisions and enacting policy. But the recommendation focuses on the undeniable positive benefits of improvements in the accessibility, integration, interpretation and usability of public opinion data for any and all who are in a position to use such data”.