Despite institutional barriers to political participation, technological advances have increased the possibility for greater public involvement in policy making. The United States is one of the most heavily researched societies in terms of public opinion, with the government alone conducting more than a million surveys a year. However, public opinion is a complex phenomenon and in a society of more than 300 million residents, collecting and ascertaining public opinion is not without its obstacles.

All forms of opinion collecting are indications and interventions of public opinion. Critics argue that pre-coded survey questions and forced-choice answer responses, the most widely used opinion measure, fail to capture the complexities of an individual's decisionmaking process. For example, responses such as "strongly agree" and "agree" fail to empirically quantify the magnitude of public preferences. Furthermore, some polls construct opinions rather than capture them, because surveys may make an issue more salient than others, thus creating the impression of public importance.

Polling may not capture actual public sentiment, since research shows that Americans are misinformed on many policy issues. A notable example is citizens' views toward U.S. foreign aid. Those polled preferred cutting foreign aid spending by half but perceived that it took up nearly 20 percent of the U.S. budget. In reality, the United States allocates less than 1 percent of its budget to foreign aid. The paradox for opinion measurement is that those polled prefer drastic cuts while simultaneously advocating massive spending increases.

An additional problem is framing. Research shows that the way questions are framed or worded may significantly affect the outcome of the answer and not capture true preferences. For example, programs for "the poor" receive significantly more support than "welfare" programs, despite referring to the same policies. The difference reflects the meaning of the terms, since most language lacks neutrality. Elite discourse, especially in the media, often influences and defines the terminology. At the extreme end of framing are "push polls"--loaded questions intended to influence the survey's outcome. Measurement and sampling errors hinder accurate assessments of policy preferences. Sampling is important because of the high transaction costs that would incur gathering everyone's opinion; accurate sampling is also important because public opinion is not homogenous, varying by gender, class, religion, and other factors. Also skewing polls are the respondents' private views and the preferences expressed, assuming they answer the questions at all. Thus, it may be difficult to determine genuine public opinion concerning sensitive topics because of participants' unwillingness or fear of the potential costs of expressing actual sentiments. Furthermore, research shows that knowledge is unequally distributed and the resource rich are more likely to effectively link and express personal preferences.

In addition to shaping opinion, technology changes the collection of public opinion as cell phones, call screening devices, "Do Not Call" lists, and wariness toward strangers make it increasingly harder for pollsters to ascertain public preferences. The Internet, however, presents new avenues (and problems) to opinion collection and expression.

Polls measure what we claim to know but often fail to determine how and why we know it. They lack context by focusing on opinion outcomes without considering the social forces and assumptions that inform those opinions. These issues are not to imply that polls are meaningless, but rather to acknowledge that surveys establish a specific framework for which opinion is measured and it is imperative to understand the limits and constraints of the frameworks. Moreover, the act of measuring opinion itself requires considerable resources that are mainly enjoyed by a small population segment.

References:

1) Berinsky, Adam J. 2004. Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

2) Jacobs, Lawrence R. and Robert Y. Shapiro. 2000. Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

3) Lewis, Justin. 2001. Constructing Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why We Seem to Go Along with It. New York: Columbia University Press.

4) Lippmann, Walter. [1922] 2008. Public Opinion. Edinburgh, Scotland: Word Power Books.

5) Manza, Jeff, Fay Lomax Cook, and Benjamin I. Page, eds. 2002. Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

6) Page, Benjamin I. and Marshall Bouton. 2006. The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

7) Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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