The Role of Survey Research in the Administration of Justice

Abstract

A recent issue of USA Today reported on no less than five surveys of public opinion. Readers were informed about 1) the top five things active people look forward to in their golden years; 2) the extent to which people believed that their memory was more or less acute today than it was ten years ago; 3) whether the public wanted the federal govern ment to ban research using stem cells; 4) the degree to which people believed Congressman Gary Condit was involved in Chandra Levy's disappearance; and 5) whether or not the president's vacation was too lengthy. Surveys are conducted these days on virtually every conceivable topic and report findings that range from the serious to the sublime to the just plain silly. Public opinion surveys, in part because of this proliferation, have themselves become the subject of popular discourse. Pundits raise the question of whether gover nance should be based on poll findings as opposed to serious analysis and discourse based on higher principles. Civic groups bemoan the predictive power of polling during elections for fear that the findings sway votes and lessen political participation. Citizens and news consumers struggle to understand conflicting results on the same topics, rais ing doubts about the validity of the whole polling enterprise, much less the merits of the matters in dispute. This public side of public opinion surveying raises justifiable concern about the value any use of surveys might have in the administration of justice. In fact, one might argue that given its uses for less then admirable ends, plus judicial commitment to arm's length distance from public opinion via the principles of "rule of law" and "blind jus tice," the answer to the question of the role of survey research in the administration of justice might seem simple: don't bother. Indeed, stay away. There is, however, another side to public opinion surveying that actually serves pur poses less nefarious and more meaningful than what sees the light of media attention. In the academic world, social scientists have long used surveys as a key tool in under standing human motivations and behaviors, using the data derived to build elaborate models predictive of what makes us human. In the pragmatic world of business, surveys are used to inform decisions about whether to create (or to modify) products or services and whether to sustain, expand, or modify attempts to influence or persuade. Business also surveys its various publics and internal audiences to better arm itself with "proof that its product or service is good or with insights about its longevity in the face of new