Public Choices in Changing Times

For the last couple of days I have been at the AAPOR Annual Conference down in hot, humid, and generally unpleasant Hollywood, FL.  For as long as I have been a member of AAPOR there has been a tradition of having a plenary session the night before the conference actually begins and on Thursday night we had two excellent speakers: Paul Donato from The Nielsen Company and Ken Prewitt from Columbia University. Paul is a veteran market researcher who has held senior research posts in a number of MR companies and Ken has led a variety of government and non-for-profit organizations including the US Bureau of the Census, NORC, and the Ford Foundation.  These guys come from different worlds and their presentations showed it.

Paul's talk was all about the transition from traditional survey research to a digital world of electronic measurement.  He took us along a progression of methods from asking (surveys, including online), listening (social networks, co-creation, crowd sourcing, harvesting blogs, etc.) and watching (principally ethnography).  I had heard similar talks before, but for many AAPORites this was new and challenging stuff.

Ken Prewitt almost immediately raised the issue of representation.  As a former Director of the Census he is attuned the role that survey data play in the formulation of public policy in a democracy.  He underscored the importance of reaching everyone, something the digital methods that Paul was describing do not do.  The movement that he foresees away for surveys was mostly about use of government agency and program administrative records.  This has been talked about for most of my career in survey research, but we have made precious little progress.

I found myself agreeing with both of them.  In the discussion they more or less did the same.  The term "fit-for-purpose" never came up but that ultimately was the issue.  It was good dialog of the sort we don't often see.