Sociology in the Soviet Union and Beyond by Elizabeth A. Weinberg

Author:Elizabeth A. Weinberg [Weinberg, Elizabeth A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781351148788
Google: -JxADwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-28T03:32:28+00:00

Critiquing Public Opinion Research

It will already have become clear from the preceding survey that public opinion polls were on the whole characterized by an increasing concern with methodological questions, such as with the representativeness of the sample in relation to the population at large. Indeed, one significant contribution of public opinion research was its stimulation of debate about survey methods. Almost from the outset, the Komsomol'skaia Pravda polls came under direct attack. Thus, in June 1961, after the results of the first three polls had been published, a conference was held to consider public opinion polling.7 At this conference, the main concerns were the use of open and closed questions, sampling methods and the role of statistics. A debate developed between B. Grushin of the Public Opinion Institute, who defended open questions, and F. D. Livshits, Candidate of Economic Science, who spoke in favour of closed questions. Stressing the importance of the choice of the subjects to be investigated, Livshits condemned the second poll on the standard of living because, he stated, the Central Statistical Administration already conducted research on this very question. The other participants did not criticize the topics of the investigations but they did attack the general sampling procedures. A. G. Volkov of the Scientific Research Institute of Labour said that the respondents were not selected at random. V. D. Mirkin from the RSFSR Central Statistical Administration added that all population groups were not represented. All the conference participants stressed the need to use statistics and statistical methods in doing public opinion research.

By June of 1963 comment on the third poll was available.8 Candidate M. Kh. Igitkhanian said that although the organizers of the youth poll had not been able to 'typify' the composition of the sample population in advance, the poll was nonetheless representative and characteristic of Soviet youth.9 This, however, was as far as his praise went. He said that Soviet researchers did not know how to conduct public opinion polls; they were ignorant of general statistical principles, concrete methods of typology and tests for the reliability of the polls' results. He then stated that polls conducted through the newspapers ascertained the opinion of isolated individuals rather than collective opinion. Finally, he warned that neither a detailed elaboration of the methods of opinion polling nor an improvement in the techniques of analysis could by themselves ensure accuracy: the results of a poll could reflect true public opinion only if, along with provisions for representation in sampling and objectivity in analysis, the very subject of the poll was of interest to the respondents.

In 1965, a major contribution to the debate over public opinion research was made by B. A. Grushin in an article which examined and weighed the past efforts and outlined future possibilities of this type of research.10 The material from the first seven polls formed the basis of his discussion. Grushin stated that most often a public opinion poll proceeded from a study of a part to a generalization about the whole. In other

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