Researching the Public Opinion Environment

RESEARCHING

THE PUBLIC

OPINION

ENVIRONMENT

SAGE SERIES IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

SERIES EDITORS

Robert L. Heath and Gabriel M. Vasquez

Embracing ideas as old as the rhetorical heritage of Western Civilization and

as new as theoretical models that draw on social science, the Sage Series in

Public Relations comprises the work of academic and professional practi￾tioners. Combining theory and practice, authors seek to redefine the field

through thoughtful examinations of the breadth and depth of public relations.

Books in the series may emphasize theory, research foundations, or practice,

but all focus on advancing public relations excellence. The series publishes

work devoted to the principle that public relations adds economic, socio￾political, and cultural value to society, particularly those societies based on

democratic ideals.

Books in this series:

Communication Planning: An Integrated Approach

Sherry Devereaux Ferguson

Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding

W. Timothy Coombs

Researching the Public Opinion Environment: Theories and Methods

Sherry Devereaux Ferguson

SSPR

Sage Series in Public Relations

RESEARCHING

THE PUBLIC

OPINION

ENVIRONMENT

Theories and Methods

Sherry Devereaux Ferguson

KVSage Publications, Inc. ml International Educational and Professional Publisher

Zs Thousand Oaks ■ London ■ New Delhi

Copyright © 2000 by Sage Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ferguson, Sherry Devereaux.

Researching the public opinion environment: Theories and methods /

by Sherry Devereaux Ferguson.

p. cm. — (Sage series in public relations: v. 3)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 0-7619-1530-3 (cloth: acid-free paper)

ISBN 0-7619-1531-1 (pbk.: acid-free paper)

1. Public opinion. 2. Public opinion polls. 3. Mass media and public

opinion. I. Title. II. Series.

HM1236.F47 2000

300.3'8—dc21 00-008509

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

00 01 02 03 04 05 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acquiring Editor: Margaret H. Seawell

Editorial Assistant: Sandra Krumholz

Production Editor: Astrid Virding

Editorial Assistant: Victoria Cheng

Designer/Typesetter: Janelle LeMaster

Cover Designer: Candice Harman

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

PART I: THEORY AND SYSTEMS

1. Role of Public Opinion in Democratic Societies 3

The Classical Debate 3

The Modern Debate 7

Perceived Impact of the Media 11

Conclusion 16

2. Establishing Intelligence Systems to Capture Public Opinion 19

Importance of Listening to Public Opinion 19

Sources That Feed the System 21

Components to Environmental Intelligence Systems 30

Approaches to Organizing the Intelligence Function 40

Conclusion 45

PART II: MONITORING AND ANALYZING THE MEDIA

3. Monitoring the Media: Asking Questions 51

Which Publics Have Reacted? 52

What Do People Say About the Organization? 57

How Do Media Frame the Story? 60

What Are the Catalysts and Spin-Off Issues? 76

What Are the Trends in Media Coverage? 77

Conclusion 83

4. Content Analysis Techniques 85

History and Definition of the Methodology 85

Steps in Conducting Content Analysis 87

Training and Using the Analyst 126

Conclusion 129

PART III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

5. Survey Design and Sampling 133

Rationale for Surveying 134

Selecting the Research Design 136

Choosing the Sample 138

Conclusion 145

6. Survey Development 147

Coauthored With Alexandra Hendriks

Wording Survey Questions 147

Constructing and Ordering the Questions 163

Preparing Introductory Material 177

Conclusion 177

7. Survey Administration 179

Pretesting the Survey 179

Administering the Survey 179

Interpreting and Reporting the Results 187

Interacting With Survey Research Firms 196

Conclusion 197

8. Focus Groups, Delphi Technique, Stakeholder Assemblies,

and Q Methodology 199

Focus Groups 200

Other Methodologies 218

Conclusion 222

PART IV: THEORIES ON THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA

9. Academic Debate Over Media Effects: The Effects Continuum 225

Powerful, Direct Effects Model 226

Limited Effects Model 226

Limited and Indirect Effects Model 227

Limited and "Direct-ed" Effects Model 229

Powerful and Cumulative Effects Model 230

Selective Reinforcement 236

The "Third-Person Effect" 236

Conclusion 237

Appendix A 239

Appendix B 253

References 263

Author Index 283

Subject Index 289

About the Authors 295

This book is dedicated to

five generations of women in my family:

Verna Claire Gunn

Maureen Claire Devereaux

Barbara Ann Champagne, Desiree Marlene Devereaux,

and Maureen Claire Smith

Alexandra Maureen Hendriks, Christin Anne Prinster,

Ashley Claire Smith, and Cameron Devereaux Velut

Ashley, Courtney, Lydia, Mara, Melissa,

and Victoria Champagne

Emilie and Erica Ferguson

Alexandra Claire Prinster

Introduction

Politicians, government leaders, and chief executive officers (CEOs) face

the challenge of coping with a volatile public opinion environment.

Whereas presidents and prime ministers once enjoyed a relatively lengthy

honeymoon period with their constituencies, they now find that they are un￾der attack within 6 months of entering office. The "immediacy" of the new

media has collapsed the time available for decision making to unrealistic pa￾rameters, creating panic in leaders who are expected to be all-knowing. Every

politician fears stepping off a plane and being faced with a crowd of reporters

who shout, "What do you think about. . .?" In reality, the leader may think

nothing, being totally uninformed on some event that occurred while the per￾son was traveling from one destination to another. Increased access to infor￾mation means that ever larger segments of the population learn about crisis

events and political developments at the same time as, or even before, their

leaders.

The response of government heads and CEOs has been to establish sophis￾ticated intelligence systems that track the opinion of key publics on high-pro￾file issues. Some have also developed early warning systems that identify

emerging concerns. Some public relations employees, charged with the task

of scanning daily newspapers and television news, quake at the possibility

that they may have missed two lines in a prominent news source (or some￾times even in an obscure community or ethnic newspaper). Once the omis￾sion is discovered, reaction from the top can be swift and punitive. The turn￾ix

X RESEARCHING THE PUBLIC OPINION ENVIRONMENT

over of press secretaries within government reflects the importance that

executives attach to the function of staying informed on matters of public

opinion. Press secretaries do more than make statements to the press. They

also monitor the efficiency of their information-gathering structures—their

means of obtaining immediate feedback on what people are saying in the

press, on the Internet, and through other public venues. The number of media￾monitoring and Internet-monitoring firms has mushroomed as interest in is￾sue tracking has increased.

Governments, media, and corporations also invest large sums of money in

surveys and polls. Even when organizations do not conduct their own surveys

on public issues, the majority appear to recognize the benefits of becoming

sophisticated consumers of surveys commissioned by other groups. Govern￾ment monitors big business, and big business monitors government. In the

same way, focus groups have acquired tremendous popularity in recent years

as public, private, and voluntary sectors seek to understand their constituen￾cies and clientele. Some consulting firms have developed less well-known

methodologies such as stakeholder assemblies. Organizations use this

knowledge of stakeholder opinion to feed into their policy-making pro￾cesses, to frame their corporate communication strategies, to learn more

about how key publics perceive the leadership of the organization, and to

evaluate their programs.

This book fills a gap in the academic literature. No other academic book

brings together concepts related to theories of public opinion, media moni￾toring, survey and focus group research, and scanning and monitoring prac￾tices. Many books, however, address individual topics of relevance. For ex￾ample, Sage is the dominant publisher in the area of survey techniques, with

books such as Bourque and Clark's Processing Data: The Survey Example

(1992); Bourque and Fielder's How to Conduct Self-Administered and Mail

Surveys (1995); Edwards, Thomas, Rosenfeld, and Booth-Kewley's How to

Conduct Organizational Surveys: A Step-by-Step Guide (1996); Fink and

Kosecoff's How to Conduct Surveys: A Step-by-Step Guide (1998); Fowler's

Improving Survey Questions (1995) and Survey Research Methods (1993);

Fowler and Mangione's Standardized Survey Interviewing: Minimizing In￾terviewer-Related Errors (1990); Frey and Oishi's How to Conduct Inter￾views by Telephone and in Person (1995); Lavrakas's Telephone Survey

Methods (1993); Litwin's How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity

(1995); Mangione's Mail Surveys: Improving the Quality (1995); Schuman

and Presser's Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on

Introduction XI

Question Form, Wording, and Context (1996); and Weisberg, Krosnick, and

Bowen's An Introduction to Survey Research, Polling, and Data Analysis

(1996). Fink has published numerous monographs in this area, including

How to Analyze Survey Data (1995a), How to Ask Survey Questions (1995b),

How to Design Surveys (1995c), How to Report on Surveys (1995d), How to

Sample in Surveys (1995e), The Survey Handbook (1995f), and The Survey

Kit (I995g).

Other books exist in the area of focus group testing. Popular texts include

Barbour and Kitzinger's Developing Focus Group Research (1998);

Krueger's Analyzing and Reporting Focus Group Results (1997a), Moder￾ating Focus Groups (1997b), and Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Ap￾plied Research (1994); Morgan's Focus Groups as Qualitative Research

(1997); Morgan and Krueger's The Focus Group Kit: Volumes 1-6 (1997);

Stewart and Shamdasani's Focus Groups: Theory and Practice (1990); and

Vaughn, Schumm, and Sinagub's Focus Group Interviews in Education and

Psychology (1996). Books that treat Q methodologies include McKeown and

Thomas's Q Methodology (1988).

Locating a book that covers the topic of media monitoring is more prob￾lematic. Merriam and Makower wrote Trend Watching: How the Media Cre￾ate Trends and How to Be the First to Uncover Them (1988), and Fan wrote

Predictions of Public Opinion From the Mass Media (1988). An early work

by Aguilar {Scanning the Business Environment, 1967) established the termi￾nology for scanning and monitoring.

Yeric and Todd's Public Opinion: The Visible Politics (1996) and Price's

Public Opinion (1992) are interesting academic treatments of public opinion.

Yeric and Todd's book includes discussion of the classical public opinion lit￾erature, development of individual opinions, tools of public opinion polling,

citizen impact on public policy, and public opinion and public issues.

To obtain instruction on how to analyze media coverage, classical treat￾ments such as Berelson's Content Analysis in Communication Research

(1952), Holsti's Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities

(1969), and Gerbner, Holsti, Krippendorff, Paisley, and Stone's The Analysis

of Communication Content: Developments in Scientific Theories and Com￾puter Techniques (1969) are the best. Dyer added useful insights in the area of

computer analysis with his book In-Depth Understanding: A Computer

Model of Integrated Processing of Narrative Comprehension (1983). Sage

published works by Weber and Krippendorff in the 1980s. Berger's Media

Research Techniques (1991) includes a short chapter on content analysis of

Xll RESEARCHING THE PUBLIC OPINION ENVIRONMENT

the media, as do numerous methodology textbooks published for use by com￾munication students. Generic in their applications, none of these treatments

discuss examples specific to analysis of public opinion data.

The final category of works (relevant to the topic of monitoring public

opinion) comprises books dedicated to issues management and strategic

planning. These books tend to reflect management and communication liter￾ature. Older works include Brown's This Business of Issues: Coping With the

Company's Environments (The Conference Board, 1979); Chase's Issues

Management: Origins of the Future (1984); Buchholz, Evans, and Wagley's

Management Response to Public Issues: Concepts and Cases in Strategy For￾mulation (1985); Heath and Nelson's Issues Management (1986); Ewing's

Managing the New Bottom Line: Issues Management for Senior Executives

(1987); and Heath and Associates' Strategic Issues Management (1988). The

Quorum Books Division of Greenwood published Renfro's Issues Manage￾ment in Strategic Planning (1993) and Mahon and McGowan's Industry as a

Player in the Political and Social Arena: Defining the Competitive Environ￾ment (1996). Ferguson authored Mastering the Public Opinion Challenge in

1994 (published by Irwin), and Heath updated his earlier book in 1997 (Stra￾tegic Issues Management: Policy Options).

In 1999, Ferguson published Communication Planning: An Integrated Ap￾proach. This book emphasizes the importance of using stakeholder opinion

as a basis for strategic planning in organizations. In the same way as Mas￾tering the Public Opinion Challenge, Communication Planning stresses the

importance of drawing on many different sources in seeking to understand

how key publics perceive the organization, its leaders, and its issues. In con￾clusion, the previously mentioned books represent the range of literature that

is relevant to the topic of public opinion monitoring. In seeking to inform

readers on the rationale, purposes, and methodologies involved in public

opinion research, Researching the Public Opinion Environment adds impor￾tant new perspectives to the literature.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I examines theories and systems

relevant to public opinion research. Chapter 1 reviews the classical debate re￾garding the role of public opinion in democratic society and the modern de￾bate regarding the purposes and ends of public opinion research. Taking a

populist perspective, Chapter 2 discusses the importance of listening to key

publics, the sources that feed organizational intelligence systems, compo￾nents of such systems, and approaches to setting up the intelligence function

in organizations. The chapter assumes that corporations are as interested as

Introduction Xll l

governments in learning more about how people perceive their organizations

and leadership.

Part II addresses the topics of monitoring and analyzing the media. Chap￾ter 3 identifies questions that can be asked by the opinion analyst, usually en￾gaged in monitoring the media. The following are the most common clusters

of questions: Which publics have reacted to policies and announcements by

the organization? What do people say about the organization? How do media

depict the organization and its leaders? What catalysts drive media coverage

and what are the spinoff issues? and Which trends have developed? Chapter 4

describes standard content analysis techniques that provide a means for ana￾lyzing data gathered from media sources, the Internet, correspondence, focus

groups, and other communication content. The emphasis of the chapter is on

media analysis, the most common organizational application.

Part III describes the basics of survey research, focus groups, Delphi tech￾niques, stakeholder assemblies, and Q methodology. The intent of Chapters

5, 6, and 7 is to convey sufficient information to allow organizational re￾searchers to frame research questions, construct and administer question￾naires, interpret the results of survey research, and critique research carried

out on their behalf by survey research firms. The discussion is limited to topic

areas that are most relevant to the work of organizational communicators,

who rarely implement large-scale survey research projects without the help

of outside firms. The emphasis of the chapters is on creating knowledgeable

consumers and interpreters of survey research. This discussion also directs

the reader to common errors in designing studies, sampling, framing and or￾dering questions, administering surveys, and interpreting results. Chapter 8

reviews the purposes, strengths, and weaknesses of focus groups, the stages

through which the groups move, and common participant and moderator be￾haviors. Other topics include stakeholder assemblies, Q methodologies, and

Delphi techniques, which are additional alternatives for gathering opinion

data.

Finally, Part IV examines the impact of the media. Chapter 9 outlines the

continuum of academic opinion on media effects and the ongoing academic

debate on this topic. This debate brings into question the assumptions of or￾ganizational researchers who take for granted the powerful influence of me￾dia on audiences.

The book has many special features. The organization of public opinion

theories in Chapter 1 is unique to this book, and although other books address

the topic of public opinion theories, few seek to integrate the theoretical and

XIV RESEARCHING THE PUBLIC OPINION ENVIRONMENT

the practical elements of this area of study. The menu of questions in Chapter

3 is an original contribution, which dates from the author's 1994 book on me￾dia monitoring. Graphs, tables, and sample analyses—uncharacteristic of

other books on public opinion research—help the reader to understand appli￾cations described in the book.

Some omissions are deliberate. For example, this book does not discuss lit￾erature relevant to the psychology of audiences. The intent is to determine

opinions and not the thinking processes behind the opinions. Also, even

though many ideas are applicable to market researchers, this book does not

explicitly reference the market research literature. Nor does the book purport

to be a standard research methodology text. Similarly, the professional audi￾ence for this book will be communicators in business, government, nonprofit,

and political organizations whose involvement with survey research design

stops short of conducting the actual study.

The book has two audiences—academic and professional. Regarding the

academic audience, this book is appropriate as a text in upper-level under￾graduate or graduate courses that deal with public relations functions, the

role of public relations in politics, corporate communication, issues manage￾ment, political communication, and public opinion. Political science depart￾ments and government policy instructors will find the subject matter relevant

to courses in political management and public opinion. The implications for

issues management courses and strategic planning courses ensure the book's

attractiveness to business schools. Professional communicators in corpora￾tions, policy analysts and communicators in government, political consul￾tants and political managers, and training and development firms comprise

the professional audience.