Understanding public opinion

About this book

Understanding Public Opinion, edited by Barbara Norrander and Clyde Wilcox, is a collection of original essays that explores the sources, content, and effects of American public opinion at the close of the twentieth century. The book examines the diversity in contemporary public opinion research by focusing on questions such as where attitudes and opinions come from, how they are organized, how they affect an individual's political participation and vote choice, what forms the content of public opinion, and what impact public opinion has on the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court. The chapters, written by leading scholars, present research that exposes readers to both the substance of American public opinion and the process of that research. They reveal how social scientists approach a question, what the research looks like, and how conclusions are derived.