scholarly journals The raced constitution of Europe: The Eurobarometer and the statistical imagination of European racism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Slootweg ◽  
Rogier van Reekum ◽  
Willem Schinkel
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Public Opinion Research ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Opinion Polling ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Public ◽  
Shed Light

Centering upon the first Europe-wide public opinion survey of racism, carried out by the Eurobarometer in 1988, this article explores how studying European public opinion research can shed light on what we call the raced constitution of Europe. Based on an analysis of this Eurobarometer survey, we scrutinize how Eurobarometer opinion polling involves a constant scale-switching through which ‘Europe’ and ‘racism’ are co-produced. As we argue, techniques of European opinion polling contributed to the imagination of a ‘European’ ideological whole, from which stabilized categories of ‘non-European others’ were excluded. By creating an opposition between ‘democratic Europe’ and ‘individualized xenophobia’, racism was enacted as a lower class attitude ‘not of Europe’ and as a permanent rem(a)inder of the past that serves to legitimate the project of European integration.

Arabs and democracy: an analysis of the findings of the survey of Arab public opinion towards democracy

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef Mohammad Sawani
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Arab Culture ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
Shed Light

A survey commissioned by the Center of Arab Unity Studies (CAUS), and carried out in late 2009 and early 2010, was the first Arab public opinion survey on democracy of its kind. This article presents its findings and contextualizes the analyses in the debate that has marked Arab political thinking on democracy as a system of good governance. The purpose of the survey was to shed light on the attitudes of ordinary Arabs with respect to democracy. Contrary to approaches that sought to explain the democratic deficit in the Arab world by virtue of its inherently ‘undemocratic’ culture and the Islamic religion, democratic elements are not absent from Arab culture and Arab people are yearning for democracy. The article analyses and compares the results with those of other surveys to conclude that contemporary Arabs are no exception and they have the same attitudes shared by humanity at large with respect to democracy as a solid political base for a fair system of governance.

scholarly journals Standards and scoring to increase transparency for archived public opinion data

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Weldon
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
American Association ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Public Opinion Research ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Disclosure Requirements ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Automatic Scoring

Faced with increased diversification of methodologies in the polling industry, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Center is embarking on a major initiative aimed at increasing methodological transparency across the field of public opinion survey research by increasing minimum disclosure requirements and providing users with transparency scoring for new submissions to the archive. Roper Center, the world’s largest archive of public opinion survey data, has long enforced disclosure requirements for archival submissions based on transparency standards developed by professional organizations in the polling industry, particularly the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). Roper Center’s new requirements and scoring mechanism expand longstanding policies and procedures to better meet the challenges of today’s research environment.In this paper, Roper Center’s new standards will be described in the context of the historical development of transparency expectations in the polling community. The paper presentation will also detail the implementation process, providing an account of how standards were translated into actionable DDI-based metadata to drive an automatic scoring system, how new workflows were developed with input from data providers to facilitate maximum disclosure, and how the display of the user interface was designed to ensure the transparency information can be easily viewed and understood.

An Experiment in Public-opinion Polling among Preliterate People

Africa ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. G. Marwick
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Opinion Polling ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist

Opening ParagraphTowards the end of 1947 I carried out a public-opinion survey among the Cewa tribe of Fort Jameson district, Northern Rhodesia. Although the survey was a failure, judged by the rigorous standards of public-opinion polling, it nevertheless threw light on some of the problems that arise when public-opinion-polling techniques are adapted for use among preliterate peoples. Research of this kind has a place in assessing general morale, in gauging people's reactions to administrative and development policies, and in supplementing the more intensive, but highly selective, observations of the social anthropologist. Because this is an important but almost untouched field, I am recording the lessons that are to be learned from my experiment.

Perception of Traffic Noise Barrier Effectiveness: Public Opinion Survey of Residents Living near I-71

1997 ◽  
Vol 1601 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd A. Herman ◽  
Michael A. Finney ◽  
Craig M. Clum ◽  
E.W. Pinckney
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Department Of Transportation ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Noise Barriers ◽  
Noise Abatement ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Project Area ◽  
Noise Barrier

The completion of the largest Ohio Department of Transportation traffic noise abatement project in 1995 was met with public controversy over the effectiveness of the noise barriers. A public opinion survey was designed to obtain the perceptions of the residents in the project area. In a departure from most surveys of traffic noise barrier effectiveness, the coverage was not limited to the first or second row of houses, but was extended to 800 m on each side of the roadway. It was found that the larger survey area was needed to avoid misleading conclusions. Overall perceptions of noise barrier effectiveness were found to vary with distance from the roadway and with noise barrier configuration.

Testing the Effects of Paired Issue Statements on the Seven-Point Issue Scales

1993 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 61-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Jacoby
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Psychological Distance ◽  
National Election ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Question Format ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
Election Studies

Many recent empirical analyses of citizens' issue attitudes rely on the seven-point issue scales, which have been included in all of the biennial National Election Studies (NES) since 1968. The question format used to create these scales requires people to respond to two different issue statements simultaneously. While this approach has a number of practical advantages, it may also distort the measurement of issue attitudes in several ways. In order to examine this possibility, a 1990 South Carolina public-opinion survey had people respond to the separate issue statements. The empirical results lead to an optimistic assessment of the seven-point scales. People do seem to regard the paired issue statements in any of the seven-point questions as the opposite sides of a political controversy. This general conclusion has some important caveats: there are several distinct dimensions underlying citizens' issue judgments, and the degree of psychological distance between conflicting issue positions varies somewhat across issues. These findings have important implications for our understanding and measurement of citizens' issue attitudes.

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