This sort of survey research is based on assumptions having far more to do with the needs and priorities of news organizations than of the people being polled, the presumptive consumers of these news organizations' journalism. Too often polling pushes people into corners where an opinion is demanded rather than freely given. By contrast, civic journalists start their reporting from the bottom up rather than from the top down, with the information needs of the public a first rather than a last thought. They search for a deeper, richer understanding of the state of public opinion. They look for connections among the public's beliefs.
Focus groups can be particularly helpful.
They allow for the kind of thoughtful probing necessary to establish a public agenda, by definition a far more complex set of the public's beliefs than the superficial positions established by conventional snapshot polls. The Harwood Group's Richard Harwood thinks journalists' conventional polling often asks the wrong question in an effort to chart definitive movement. He says it's more important to find out how people think rather than what they think on any given pubic question. His theory calls for sorting through the often conflicting views, the biases, the assumptions people bring to any discussion of public affairs. If that sounds more demanding, tougher, more time consuming than conventional survey research, it is.