Opinion surveys are big business and getting bigger.
The latest survey findings regularly make the national headlines and in significant ways shape the social policy agenda. Pollsters and survey experts are becoming influential policy advisors. As the use of opinion surveys becomes increasingly pervasive and as their influence grows, we need more than ever to understand their limits and dangers. Some of the most important issues are not empirical, not questions of sampling or accuracy but rather conceptual. That is, we must ask what such a technology can contribute to policy and program development irrespective of technical improvements.