RESEARCH
CAPABILITIES
 Institute for Public Policy
BRINGING PUBLIC PERSPECTIVES INTO THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS

 
 
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UNM Survey Research Center

The heart of many IPP projects is a survey either of the general public or of a special population, such as the staff of a university or the portion of a state's population with disabilities. To conduct these surveys, the IPP maintains a Survey Research Center (SRC) using a nineteen station computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system. Each station has a computer connected to a central file-serving system with direct access to long-distance telephone lines. The SRC efficiently conducts standard public opinion surveys as well as more complex quasi-experimental surveys.

The IPP staff work with clients to develop valid and reliable survey questions. The SRC then enters the final questionnaire into the CATI system to create an automated survey instrument with complex randomizations, respondent screening, and experimental variations in question wording. Interviewers read survey questions from computer screens and enter responses directly into the CATI, thereby eliminating the possibility of subsequent data transcription errors.

Intensive training and supervision ensures the quality of every IPP interview. Interviewers receive training in survey theory and method upon employment and prior to every survey. During each survey, supervisors use a "silent monitor" system to monitor unobtrusively telephone interviews.

The SRC uses rigorous procedures to ensure the representativeness of the survey sample. The validity of the survey is ensured by a combination of random digit dialing, random respondent identification within households, and a customized database that records call attempts and schedules interviews.

Tenacity is another reason for the SRC's high survey response rates. The SRC makes up to ten calls for each number (far above the industry standard of three), and interviewers have a remarkable 50% success rate for completing interviews with respondents who refused to participate when first contacted.

SRC mail surveys also obtain the highest possible response rates. We do this by contacting potential respondents up to four times and through careful tracking and follow-up of non-respondents with a customized database logging system. For mail surveys, data entry is performed in-house, with subsequent quality assurance checks on 100% of all entries to prevent manual entry errors.

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Focus Group Interviews

IPP routinely conducts focus group research to clarify hypotheses about public perceptions of an issue or to test alternative phrasings for questions that might appear in a subsequent survey. Trained IPP staff moderate focus groups at private facilities across the country and at the IPP. Focus groups held at the IPP are videotaped using wide-angle and telescopic cameras, and we invite clients to watch group discussions on a large-screen monitor in another room. The Survey Research Center recruits local IPP focus group participants, and no participants have prior experience in focus groups.

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Data Analysis and Presentation

To analyze focus group and survey data, the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) maintains a diverse team of researchers with experience in quantitative and qualitative analysis. IPP staff are capable of presenting highly-sophisticated statistical analyses, such as regression and loglinear analyses, path analyses, time-series analyses, cluster analyses, and factor analyses. In addition, final IPP reports routinely include an appendix with simple response frequencies and descriptive statistics.

The IPP also publishes professional qualitative analyses and reports. The Institute frequently provides narrative focus group summaries that identify common themes in participants' comments and reveal the language people use when discussing policy issues. Qualitative research at the IPP also includes studies of transcribed public forums, content analyses of media coverage, interpretive analysis of open-ended survey responses, and in-depth face-to-face interviews with policy experts.

In addition to writing final reports, the IPP normally provides clients with oral presentations summarizing key research findings. The Institute staff has outstanding public speaking skills and uses colorful, high-resolution slides to convey complex information in ways that are clear and persuasive.

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