GOVT 380 – Public Opinion and Polling Lab

Survey research is a crucially important tool for understanding how everyday people think about any given topic. This is especially important to those studying government in a democracy as public preferences serve as a key guide to legislators and policy makers on how the government should function. However, there are a number of challenges that can make getting an unbiased assessment of the public’s true beliefs difficult. This course is meant to serve as a more advanced hands-on seminar that will expose participants to the exciting and messy nature of survey research. More specifically, students will get first-hand experience designing surveys and analyzing the results but will also work through the many challenges in assessing public attitudes, including how to conceptualize and measure opinions and how to sample and weight data appropriately.