Definitions of Public Opinion
Many distinguished political thinkers have defined the concept of public opinion differently . Rousseau a prominent political thinker referred to public opinion as general will. He explained the general will by categorizing individual opinion in to two types these include, actual will and real will. Whereby, actual will refers to a person opinion regarding his or her personal interest. Whereas, real will is a person opinion concerning national interest. Rousseau however believed that general will or public opinion is the collection of individuals’ real will. In simple words sum of individuals’ opinion regarding national interest is called public opinion. Lord Bryce defined public opinion as the collection of citizens opinion that is developed based on shared national interest. In other words public opinion is the aggregate of people those opinions that are formulated keeping in view the collective national interest. According to Salta public opinion are those desires of people which they want to take on in their practical life.
Generally, we can define public opinion as reactions of citizen towards contemporary issues and events. The government structure of ancient states is unlike modern democratic state. Ancient state administrative structure was based on centralized authority of one man rather than the ideology of public opinion. Such traditional states were ruled by a monarch. Whereby, kings or monarchs would make each and every administrative decision without considering public opinion. Whereas, public opinion hold utmost importance in modern democratic states because in modern states people rule themselves directly or through their representatives by exercising their acquired power of votes. Therefore, it can be said that the existence of modern democratic state is slave to public opinion.
The objective of government is to protect political and social rights of citizens, sustain peace and order, sustain economic progress and stability, provide justice to citizen, protect state from external aggression etc… in modern democratic state legislative, judicial and executive branches of government function to fulfill various felt needs of citizens. The elected members are supposed to formulate and execute such policies through which the functional goals of government could be achieved. In modern state public opinion is taken in to account in the process of policy making for instance, if a country is facing economic crises which could lead to major recession and in order to cope with this problem the government has to give billions in loans to the giant firms. However, if the public reacted negative towards this bailout package the government may not follow through because of the fear that public may not vote for or elect contemporary ruling party in future elections.
Modern states do give importance and regard public opinion but it is not necessary that the policies which are formulated based on public opinion are always effective. Mass public do not always understand the severity and complexity of a given problems and the plan of actions which are mandatory to resolve problems. The reliability of public opinion based policies could be questioned because public opinion could be developed on misinformation — out of anger or hysteria. These issues of public opinion stir up an old question; who should formulate the policies? experts who understand the complexity of problem or general public?
Methods and Mediums for Measuring Public Opinion
Until now we studied the importance of public opinion and how does it effects the process of policy making within modern democratic state. The above explanation suggests that modern state honor the opinion of citizens while formulating policies but the question is how does government measure or get aware of public opinion? Public opinion can be measured through different research methods and mass media such as, opinion polls, surveys, print media, electronic media, social media and newspaper forums.
Opinion Polls
The method of opinion poll was used for the first time in American presidential election of 1984. This method was experimented to measure the public opinion in order to determine the presidential candidate probability rate of success. After a successful experiment public poll become the routine method for the measurement of public opinion. Many newspaper and magazines started conducting opinion polls to know the wishes of people regarding a given issue or event. However, the polls conducted via newspaper and magazines did not give sufficient results because the method was not used in accordance with given scientific criteria. The causes of insufficient results was poorly fashioned poll question and unsuitable options of answer regarding a particular issue.
Moreover, Harris Survey and Gallop poll are the two prominent expert agencies that measure and interpret public opinion via polls and survey. These agencies conduct polls before presidential elections to forecast the probability rate of success of the candidates contesting in election and their results have proven to be accurate.
Survey Method
Survey is the most effective and modern method to obtain the knowledge of public opinion or to measure public opinion regarding a given political or social problem. If we want to conduct a survey to measure the public opinion regarding economic policy of contemporary government. Firstly, we have to collect relevant data via using various data collection survey instruments. Secondly, after data collection we have to compile and quantify the given data. Lastly, we will interpret the compiled data in order to draw results. In survey method two types of instruments can be used for data collection including, questionnaire and interview.
Data collection instruments in survey method
Questionnaire
Questionnaire is among one of the data collection instruments of survey method. Questionnaire is further categorized in to two types including, close ended and open ended Questionnaire. Close ended questionnaire refers to the list of questions that has multiple options of answer for each question whereby, respondents have to select one answer from given options. On the other hand, open ended questionnaire contain series of questions without any answer options, respondents have to answer the given questions themselves. However, among these two types of questionnaire close ended questionnaire is most preferred choice of experts for data collection because close ended questionnaires contain multiple relevant answer options in each question which could aid surveyor to obtain reliable results. Whereas, in open ended questionnaire respondents are not given options of answer in questions therefore, they may give irrelevant answer or they might not be able to express their opinion properly. Additionally, it is difficult for researcher to compile data that is collected through open ended questionnaires which may lead to inaccurate results.
Interview
Interview is another instrument for data collection of survey. Though, how does surveyor collect data for survey via interview? Respective research agency send interviewers to ask similar set of questions from people regarding a given issue. These interview questions are designed in a fashion which allow surveyor to quantify and compile people responses in order to draw survey results. Moreover, like questionnaire interview is also categorized into two types these include, structured and unstructured interview. Structured interview is the type of interview that contain close ended questions. Whereas, unstructured interview refer to the type of interview which contain open ended questions. In structured interview respondent have to choose the answer of each question from the choices provided by interviewer. In this type of interview the response of interviewee is confined through given choices. Whereas, in unstructured interview the response of interviewee to the asked questions is not confined to few choices.
Newspaper forums
Newspapers arrange and provide different forums to the experts where they discuss different national issue. These experts hold different and opposing views. These discussions among experts of opposing views are arranged to explore real facts about particular national problem.
Mass Media
World has become a global village due to mass media. Television, internet, communication devices and social media are the modern sources of measuring public opinion. Surveys and polls could be easily conducted through these medium because it allow us to reach mass public.
Written by; Khushdil Khan Kasi
