How well can polls measure public opinion? Should government policies follow majority opinion? Do polls influence elections? Can there be polls under a dictatorship? Recent elections throughout the world have made these issues ever more crucial. "Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, "initially published under the title "Silent Politics, "is the first book to look upon polls and the awareness of poll results as forces that influence public opinion. It is a penetrating assessment of the uses of polls, their misuses, and the absurdities carried out in their name. Bogart argues that predictions based on polls can be misleading since they reflect a transient stage in a public opinion that is constantly and often rapidly changing.

Noelle-Newmann's classic on public opinion as a form of social control was originally published in German in 1980 and first published in English in 1984. This revised edition adds three new chapters to summarize ongoing research, new findings, and new developments. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

First Published in 1990. The decade of the 1980s witnessed an increasing use of polls and surveys as well as an expanded research effort into public opinion polls and survey research from the economic, historical, legal, methodological, organizational, and political viewpoints. The purpose of this volume is to provide a resource for practitioners, researchers, students, librarians, and others seeking access to this interdisciplinary literature. Instructional guides, handbooks, reference works, textbooks, research studies, and evaluative and critical studies on public opinion polls and survey research published since 1980 are included in this bibliography.

In a rigorous critique of public opinion polling in the United States, George F. Bishop makes the case that a lot of what passes as 'public opinion' in mass media today is an illusion, an artifact of measurement created by vague or misleading survey questions presented to respondents who typically construct their opinions on the spot. Using evidence from a wide variety of data sources, Bishop shows that widespread public ignorance and poorly informed opinions are the norm, rather than definitive public opinion on key political, social, and cultural issues of the day. The Illusion of Public Opinion presents a number of cautionary tales about how American public opinion has supposedly changed since September 11, 2001, amplified by additional examples drawn from the National Election Studies. Bishop's analysis of the pitfalls of asking survey questions and interpreting poll results leads the reader to a more skeptical appreciation of the art and science of public opinion polling as it is practiced today.

Summary: Juxtaposes the work of historians, philosophers, psychologists, political scientists and sociologists in an effort to ponder the knotty conceptual problems that continue to occupy the best minds in the field.--cf. Foreword.