Since 2010, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll has been conducting and publishing state and national surveys with the goal of providing non-partisan information on public opinion to the people of Massachusetts and nationwide.
“What we want to do is move away from ‘horse race coverage’ and really delve into not just providing a sense of how Americans think about pressing issues, but why they do so,” Tatishe Nteta, a political science professor at UMass and director of the Poll, said.
The Poll is run by Nteta and associate directors Raymond La Raja, Jesse Rhodes and Alexander Theodoridis, all of whom are professors in the political science department. Working with them are several post-doctoral, graduate and undergraduate student fellows.
Student fellows work with the directors from the inception of the questions to the analysis of the results. Through these programs, students are provided with unique experiences to learn about surveys.
“That’s part of our teaching mission,” La Raja said. “All of us use the poll in our classes to present the data. We talk about it. We explain what the problems might be with accuracy and why it might be.”
According to La Raja, the team at the Poll formulates questions for their surveys through meetings where they discuss “what’s important to know about what’s going on in the state or the nation right now.”
“We’re connoisseurs of other polls, so we know what people are doing,” Nteta said, “But we also have our own flair where we take our experience as professors of political science and use that experience in crafting questions that are of interest.”
While the Poll asks some of the same questions every year, like those about presidential approval, they also focus on issues specifically relevant at the time of the survey. In their most recent releases, respondents were asked about the war in Iran, which began in late February.
The Poll uses questions like these, according to Nteta, to fill “shortcomings in the existing polling space.”
To administer their surveys, the Poll works with YouGov, an online survey organization that collects responses from thousands of people on its panel of respondents. That sample of respondents is not always entirely representative of the public, so according to La Raja, the Poll adjusts to ensure they “have an estimate that’s reflective of the population.”
A few days after the surveys are sent out, the data is sent back to the Poll. The team then takes those results and develops them into charts and crosstabs, a type of data table.
These results are then outlined and distributed as press releases, which are then used for the professors’ research, teaching and are often discussed in the media. These poll results have been featured in prominent media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News.
“We’ve seen people from both sides of the ideological and partisan spectrum cite our work,” Nteta said. “And so we see that as a testament to our overarching mission.”
The professors and students involved in creating the Polls hope that the results and teaching can be used to help improve civic life and democracy in Massachusetts and the country.
“The whole point of the American experiment in democracy is that we are constantly trying to improve it,” Nteta said. “And one of the ways you can do that and assess where you’re at is through public opinion.”
Anna Fanning can be reached at [email protected].
