UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS RESEARCHERS LAUNCH STATEWIDE PUBLIC OPINION POLL

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. --- Researchers at the University of Arkansas have launched The Arkansas Poll to take the political pulse of Arkansas twice a year. The first such random sample survey of the state’s adult residents will take place early this fall.

"We’re interested in learning about what problems Arkansans perceive to be most pressing," said Dr. Janine Parry of the political science faculty and the Poll’s director. "What are the attitudes of the state’s citizens toward particular policies and services? How do they evaluate their elected officials’ efforts to meet state needs? Our research group seeks to answer these questions and more beginning this fall."

Dr. Will Miller, associate professor of political science and a promoter of the idea for The Arkansas Poll, said that the goal of the research group is to provide impartial and up-to-date information to the citizens, lawmakers, journalists, and researchers of Arkansas. "All of these groups play an important role in shaping public policy, and all will benefit from current data to inform their thinking and decision-making."

The Arkansas Poll will be conducted in the fall and again in the spring. Results will be made available to news media across the state.

"While surveys of Arkansans have been done in the past, such efforts have been sporadic and have made it difficult to track patterns over time," Parry said. "With the Poll, researchers will be able to explore citizens’ attitudes more systematically. Specifically, they will ask many of the same questions at regular intervals, making it possible to see trends in the both the composition of the population and in public opinion."

Political party preference, for example, will be a standard Poll question. Also included will be respondents’ opinions about whether things in Arkansas are better, the same, or worse than they were five years ago.

The group envisions that the Poll will sometimes focus upon particular policy areas. If school reform, for example, is at the top of the public agenda during the next legislative session, the researchers would include many questions in their spring poll about the policy alternatives being considered. Election periods, like the fall of 2000, also will generate specialized questions.

The Poll will be housed in the Department of Political Science’s Center for the Study of Representation, where most of the question writing and data analysis will take place. While this is a "natural home" for a public opinion poll, Parry said, the Poll is not exclusive to the political science faculty. Researchers from other departments and colleges, and possibly even representatives of media outlets and other groups, will be invited to contribute to the Poll as it develops.

The Poll was designed to be, and will remain, strictly nonpartisan.

For both the fall and spring surveys, the research group aims to collect the responses of approximately 750 people selected at random. That number is enough, according to statisticians, to paint an accurate picture of Arkansas’s 2.5 million residents.

The idea of a regular survey of the state’s political attitudes has been floating around for some time, according to Miller. But two developments were largely responsible for getting the Arkansas Poll off the ground this year.

First, the University established a new center for public opinion research in mid-1998. That unit, the Survey Research Center, recently acquired a computer system, known as "Info Zero Un," which makes computer-aided telephone interviewing (CATI) a possibility for researchers. The system is the same one used by the Canadian Census Bureau and is the latest in polling technology, according to Dr. Molly Longstreth, the Survey Research Center’s Director.

The Arkansas Poll being readied for this fall will be the CATI system’s maiden voyage.

The second development that helped to launch the Arkansas Poll was the adoption of a new degree program at Fayetteville, a Ph.D. in public policy. Students entering the program can expect exposure to many academic fields. Participating faculty are from all over the campus, making the degree genuinely interdisciplinary.

The relationship of the Arkansas Poll to the new Ph.D. program is to provide the students with a hands-on opportunity to study public policy, with specific attention to citizen attitudes and perceptions. The faculty hope the students will take such information with them to their jobs as public administrators, elected officials, community organizers, and more.

According to Miller, who serves as the director of the public policy Ph.D. program, "Our focus will be on training leaders who will directly affect policy issues that are relevant to the people of Arkansas, as well as the surrounding regions and the nation." The program is expecting its first class of entering graduate students this fall.

Graduate students won’t be the only beneficiaries. Poll organizers aim to supplement the experiences of undergraduate students as well. The up-to-date information on "what Arkansans are like" has the potential to add much to traditional classroom teaching. This prospect is especially exciting to Parry, who teaches a course in Arkansas Politics each year.

The Poll also will provide the kind of laboratory experience that has largely been used only within the natural and biological sciences. Undergraduate courses in Research Methods, the Family, and Cultures of the South, for example, would have access to raw data. Students could even participate in the administration of the survey in a given semester, Parry added, then learn how to conduct analyses and present findings.

The researchers emphasize that research and teaching aside, a central thrust of any educational institution, particularly one with a land-grant mission, is to contribute to the flow of information among citizens, lawmakers, and journalists. They are hopeful that the data and analysis the Poll provides will reach far outside academic life.

"By most accounts, Arkansas is in a period of profound change," Parry said. "We would like to know more about the magnitude and direction of those changes because we hope that - in addition to just being interesting for its own sake - such information will help Arkansans navigate their future."

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