Thanks to a new interdisciplinary initiative coordinated by the Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC), the University will soon be equipped to conduct its own nationwide opinion polls. The center’s first national survey, designed by a team of professors from several departments and spearheaded by QAC Director Manolis Kaparakis, will study the effects of campaign advertisements. The data will be collected in the weeks following midterm elections in the fall, and in the spring will be used by classes across several departments, possibly including the Government, Psychology, and Sociology Departments.

The survey initiative does not necessarily mean that Wesleyan will join influential pollsters like Gallup or fellow Connecticut university Quinnipiac as a barometer of the national mood. Though the QAC may prepare a press release for the pilot survey, Kaparakis emphasized the educational value of the project over its value to outside media.

“It isn’t exactly a polling center, it’s a survey center,” he said. “What we are trying to do is to give the opportunity to students to get engaged in the process of collecting primary data and analyzing it. Many students in our classes only get access to the top-line data, not the more detailed data below the surface. There will be some cases where the data is not previously available from other sources. The hope is that it will serve both purposes.”

The floor plan of recent renovations for the Allbritton Center included a room with appropriate equipment for polling. This “calling room” was used for thesis carrels last year, but now, with the help of a grant meant to support new teaching methods at the University, funds have finally been secured to equip the room with phones and the necessary software, according to Sociology Professor Daniel Long.

The QAC’s new surveying capacity will not only benefit many courses, but it will also offer an opportunity for student employment.

“We’re going to pay students to do the calling, which would be during evenings to take advantage of the Eastern all the way to Pacific time,” Long said.

He added that conducting a national survey like the pilot is no more difficult than doing a statewide one.
“The costs of doing national and local surveys are about the same. You just have to buy lists of numbers. You have the same type of accuracy too, as long as you do [a random sample and] 1000 or so interviews, which would result in a margin of error of about three percent.”

Students will also be able to work as coordinators for the initiative.

“Coordinators will work with myself and [Government] Professor [Erika] Fowler to help do training and troubleshooting if something doesn’t work out well, gather all the data that students produce, develop a webpage, check the data quality,” Long said. “Basically everything that goes on in the back room after the interviewer talks to someone, types in all the numbers, and compiles everything.”