This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Sanders, L. M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Democratic Politics and Survey Research

University of California, Berkeley

Democratically inspired critics identify a number of problems with the contemporaryidentification of survey research and public opinion. Surveys are said tonormalize or rationalize opinion, to promote state or corporate rather thandemocratic interests, to constrain authentic forms of participation, and to forcean individualized conception of public opinion. Some of these criticisms arerelatively easily answered by survey researchers. But the criticisms contain acomplaint that survey researchers have largely failed to address: that surveyresearch discourages the public, visible, and face-to-face generation of opinion.Public opinion researchers who use surveys paradoxically seek the opinions ofcitizens in private, nonpolitical situations. But nothing inherent in the methodsof survey research requires this private focus. The author argues that by reframingthe survey's unit of analysis and considering alternatives to standard,national samples in political surveys, new democratic possibilities within surveyresearch may be found.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Johnson Conceptual Problems as Obstacles to Progress in Political Science: Four Decades of Political Culture Research Journal of Theoretical Politics, January 1, 2003; 15(1): 87 - 115. [Abstract] [PDF]