Use of Public Opinion Data in Public Administration: Health Care Polls

Abstract

Conduct of citizen surveys by public administrators has been the subject of considerable discussion.' By contrast, relatively little attention has been given to the utility for public managers of published opinion polls. The purpose of this article is threefold: to review arguments in favor of administrative use of public opinion information; to demonstrate insights to be gained by administrators from a synthesis and critical examination of existing poll data; and to consider methodological weaknesses of such data and some strategies to counter them. The focus is poll data on contemporary health care issues, a good area of illustration for several reasons. First, delivery of high-quality health services at an affordable cost is a shared goal of federal, state, and local governments, and it is an activity in which many public administrators are engaged. Although a breakdown of administrative versus nonadministrative personnel is not available, a total of 1.65 million public employees worked in the health and hospitals area in 1985, up from 1.45 million ten years earlier.2 Second, published opinion data on this topic are abundant. Finally, this is an area where the character of public opinion is complex and multidimensional, thereby posing a challenge to interpretation and application.

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