An opinion, in the My Vote Forward framework, is a person’s stated view on a specific, worded question or proposal: support or opposition, and how strongly. An opinion is private by default, can be revised, and is never treated as a vote. Because the same person can give different answers to differently worded questions, an opinion only means something when it stays attached to the exact wording that produced it.
Definition
An opinion is a stated view on a particular question at a particular time. It has three parts: the question as worded, the position taken (for example, support, oppose, or unsure), and often an intensity (strongly or somewhat). The site glossary gives the working definition used across My Vote Forward: an opinion is private by default, may be published only by the person’s specific choice, can be revised, and becomes stale when the official wording of the proposal it refers to changes. See the short entry in the glossary.
An opinion is not the same as an attitude or a value. Survey researchers use “attitude” for a more lasting evaluation of an object (a policy area, an institution) and “value” for a deep commitment such as liberty or fairness. An opinion is the narrow, expressed answer. Public opinion, in turn, is an aggregate of many individual opinions on the same question, which is why it can only be described with a denominator and a method. See Aggregate.
Origin and history
Opinion as a political force is an old idea, but the measured opinion is recent. Walter Lippmann’s book Public Opinion, published in 1922, examined how people form views about events they cannot observe directly and is still read as a founding text of the field.1 Systematic measurement followed with sample surveys. Gallup has long asked Americans an open question, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”,2 which measures concern rather than position. Modern survey methods treat opinion questions as instruments whose design must be tested. See Question design.
How an opinion is measured or used
Opinions are measured by asking a worded question of a defined group and recording the answers. The central lesson of that practice is that wording and context change results. Pew Research Center documents several examples. In January 2003, 68% of Americans favored “taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule” and 25% opposed; when the question added “even if it meant that U.S. forces might suffer thousands of casualties,” 43% favored and 48% opposed.3 Pew also reports that several experiments found “much greater public support for expanding ‘assistance to the poor’ than for expanding ‘welfare’”.3 Order matters too: in October 2003, support for legal agreements for same-sex couples was 45% when the question followed a marriage question and 37% without that context.3
Format changes answers as well. Pew reports that when the economy was offered as an explicit choice in 2008, 58% chose it, while only 35% of those asked an open version volunteered it.3 None of these results shows that people lack opinions. They show that an opinion is a response to a specific stimulus, and a report of opinion must carry that stimulus with it.
Common confusions and neighboring terms
- Opinion vs. ballot. A ballot is the official, secret instrument of an election run by a legally responsible authority. An opinion is a voluntary statement that carries no legal effect. Treating a published opinion as a vote would break ballot secrecy, because a vote’s privacy depends on no one being able to prove how it was cast.
- Opinion vs. priority. A priority ranks how much a subject matters. An opinion takes a position on a specific proposal inside a subject. Two people can share a top priority and hold opposite opinions about every proposal in it.
- Opinion vs. salience. Salience is how prominent an issue is in a person’s mind or in public attention. A highly salient issue may still produce weak or unformed opinions on its specific proposals.
- Opinion vs. effectiveness judgment. Whether a program works is an evidence question. See Effectiveness assessment.
How My Vote Forward uses the term
My Vote Forward treats an opinion as one of three separate things a person can express, along with priorities and private votes. Its organizing language is “My priorities. My opinion. My vote.” An opinion in the framework is always attached to the exact text of a proposal and its version. If the official wording changes, the opinion is marked stale rather than silently carried over, because the person answered a different question. Publication of an opinion is a separate, specific choice and never the default. The full design is in Opinions and the measurement rules are in Opinion and choice.
What My Vote Forward can and cannot do here
My Vote Forward can keep opinions tied to their wording, separate them from votes, and show that a published opinion is a voluntary statement. It cannot make an opinion representative of the public: people who choose to state opinions are a self-selected group, so their opinions describe participants, not everyone. See Opt-in sample. It cannot remove wording effects; it can only disclose the wording. The demo uses simulated data, and no opinion recorded there reflects a real person.
Unresolved questions
- How long should an unrevised opinion count as current when the facts around a proposal change but its wording does not?
- Should intensity be recorded on a fixed scale, or would a scale invite people to exaggerate?
- When many people publish opinions on the same proposal, how can a summary avoid implying they represent the whole public?
Sources
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922, Project Gutenberg edition. gutenberg.org/ebooks/6456
- Gallup, “Most Important Problem” (question wording: “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”). news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx
- Pew Research Center, “Writing Survey Questions.” pewresearch.org/writing-survey-questions
