Revisiting a public opinion survey

SUGIMAN Toshio

Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501 Japan (sugiman.toshio.7a@kyoto-u.ac.jp)

Abstract: Public opinion surveys present several problems to researchers which merit discussion. Specifically, these problems are (1) difficulties of securing representation of collected samples for statistical population, (2) importance of response patterns among plural questions, (3) nature of intermediate alternatives and DK (don’t know) responses, (4) the arbitrary quantification of responses and (5) two ways of investigating social norms.
Keywords: public opinion survey; representativeness of samples; response pattern; intermediate response; social norms