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10.1: What is Comparative Public Opinion?

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    135874
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    Learning Objectives

    By the end of this section, you will be able to:

    • Define comparative public opinion.
    • Understand how public opinion is studied in a comparative context.

    Introduction

    Public opinion is, according to Britannica, "an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes, and beliefs about a particular topic, expressed by a significant proportion of a community." Public opinion is typically measured through polling, the scientific use of survey questions and instruments to gauge the explicit and implicit opinions of individuals about political issues and policy topics. Comparative public opinion is the research and analysis of public opinion across two or more states.

    Scholars of public opinion have been organized at the global level since the 1950s. For example, survey methodologists take part in the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), which has "promoted the highest professional standards, ethics and techniques for polling around the world. Their international membership represents the industry's most respected names in the survey and public opinion research field. Through publications, seminars, meetings and educational initiatives, WAPOR engages in a rich ongoing conversation about how best to collect data and maintain data quality not just in advanced democracies, but also in emerging democracies."

    While state-specific public opinion research (e.g., public opinion polls assessing national sentiment around particular policy or political issues within Chile, or within France, or within Kenya, or within South Korea, or within the United States) has a longer history than comparative public opinion research, scholars and practitioners started creating various regional and continental public opinion surveys in approximately the year 2000, and these types of surveys are generally known as "barometers." Barometers are comparative public opinion surveys that encompass multiple states. The most recent round (round nine) of surveys making up the "Afrobarometer," for example, includes 39 of the 54 states in Africa. Scholars study public opinion in the comparative context at both the conceptual and operational level, and they make inferences by comparing survey responses between states, regions, or continents.

    Evaluating Comparative Public Opinion

    Evaluating research in comparative public opinion is both exciting and challenging.

    It is exciting because we can see how individuals across different states think about similar concepts and their operationalizations (measurements). For example, we may wonder how people view housing availability across different states and, through a comparative survey, ask the following: "What role should the government play in providing housing to individuals in need?" When analyzing the results, we may realize that the notion of "housing" is conceptualized differently by people across the included states. Suppose that public housing is largely available to individuals in state one, while the government plays no (or little) role in the process of providing housing in state two. In response to the survey question, respondents in state two will not even associate their government with providing housing because it is not a part of the political institutions, culture, and expectations of people within that state. 

    Evaluating research in public opinion is also challenging because it involves grappling with the conceptual and operational level of ideas, things, and people that may not directly translate between states. This is especially difficult when language and cultural barriers exist. It is difficult for a researcher--who cannot have equal expertise in every state included in a comparative survey--to compare states given their stark political, social, linguistic, and cultural uniqueness.


    This page titled 10.1: What is Comparative Public Opinion? was last modified on Thu, 03 Jul 2025 17:52:46 GMT and is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Dino Bozonelos, Julia Wendt, Charlotte Lee, Jessica Scarffe, Masahiro Omae, Josh Franco, Byran Martin, and Stefan Veldhuis (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)) .