Problems and Issues: Comparing Public Responses About Policy Agendas

• In Event: Formation of Mass Attitudes

Abstract

Using new survey data from random samples of 1,000+ respondents in four western democracies (Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States), we examine the response effects of a new version of the “most important problem” question that has been used to assess the policy priorities of the public.

Most important problem questions have been asked more than 300 times by the Gallup polling organization and more than 300 times by other polling organizations over the past 80 years. These questions most often ask respondents to identify the “most important problem facing the country today.” Gathering agenda preferences using Gallup’s “most important problem” question poses problems of inference because it is not clear whether a named problem is one that the respondent thinks should be dealt with by the government. Although a decline of religious and family morals may be a serious problem (and ranked eighth in a June 2018 survey about “most important problems”), perhaps the respondent would also say those issues are best dealt with by the church or by families. Even if the respondent does think government involvement is the proper approach, perhaps the problem is the purview of the states or localities (e.g., crime). Wlezien (2005) points out that the question also conflates the concepts of “problem” and “issue.” And while some of the problems identified by respondents are indeed policy issues, others may not be. In Gallup’s June 7, 2011, survey the most commonly mentioned problem cited by respondents was “the government.” This may be a problem, but it is not necessarily a policy issue and does not necessarily help us understand the policy preferences of the public.

As part of the four-country Agendas and Interest Groups Project, we asked a new version of this question that 1) focused on the role of the national/federal government and 2) asked two open-ended follow-up questions that probed for details about what the respondent meant and what action the respondent would like government to take. The questions asked, first: “The government is involved in many different areas and makes many decisions that affect the country and individual citizens. From your perspective, what is the most important issue on which you would like to see a change in what the national government is doing?” And then as follow-up questions, “When you say [READ OUT ISSUE MENTIONED AT Q11A], what do you mean?” and “What change would you like to see on [READ OUT ISSUE MENTIONED AT Q11A]?” In this paper, we compare the from our survey to the responses in the contemporaneous survey by Gallup in the US, and to the most comparable surveys on “most important problems” in the other three countries.

Methodological note: The survey questions were added to omnibus surveys conducted by the British polling firm Populus. The surveys, conducted between October-December 2017, used sampling frames that included both cell phones and landlines. Data were weighted to the known profile of each country.

Authors

• Beth L. Leech, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• D.J. Joost Berkhout, University of Amsterdam

• Patrick Bernhagen, University of Stuttgart

• Adam William Chalmers, King's College London

• Amy Melissa McKay, University of Exeter