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This article reviews recent trends in modes of survey data collection, with a view to speculating on the future of survey modes. I discuss the development of the idea of modes, review the many dimensions of mode, briefly review some of the research on mode differences, discuss recent developments in mixed mode surveys, and offer some thoughts on the likely future of modes of survey data collection.

Public Opinion Quarterly at its outset focused heavily on the influences on public opinion, predicated on the assumption of its strong impact on politics and policymaking. Has this assumption been bome out? This essay reviews the research on the influence of American public opinion on policymaking that began to use survey data first to examine the legislative representation and then national-level and state-level policies. POQ's assumption has been confirmed by a substantial connection, overall, between public opinion and policymaking in the United States. Although this general finding is striking, there are limits to what we can conclude from it about American democracy. This raises important questions for future research and in ongoing debates about major issues before the nation, for which the public holds its leaders accountable.

The twentieth century saw a dramatic change in the way information was generated as probability sampling replaced full enumeration. We examine some key events of the past and issues being addressed today to gain perspective on the requirements that might steer changes in the direction of survey sampling in the future. The potential for online Web panels and other methods that do not use probability sampling are considered. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on how the future of survey sampling might be shaped by unpredictable factors.

Three central themes that have persisted throughout the history of research on communication and public opinion are examined in light of past, present, and future research. These themes include (1) ongoing concerns surrounding the political diversity of the communication environment; (2) selective exposure to political communication; and (3) the interrelationship between mass and interpersonal political communication. We explore the importance of these themes with an emphasis on how technological changes have made them, if anything, more relevant today than they were when first identified as central concerns of the discipline.

Public opinion polls have long played an important role in the study and conduct of elections. In this essay, I outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: forecasting election outcomes, understanding voter behavior, and planning campaign strategy. Since the introduction of scientific polling in the 1936 election, technology has altered the way polls are used by the media, public, candidates, and scholars. Today, polls and surveys remain vital to electoral behavior and our understanding of it, but they are being increasingly supplemented or replaced by alternate measures and methods.

We begin with a look back at the field to identify themes of recent research that we expect to continue to occupy researchers in the future. As part of this overview, we characterize the themes and topics examined in research about measurement and survey questions published in Public Opinion Quarterly in the past decade. We then characterize the field more broadly by highlighting topics that we expect to continue or to grow in importance, including the relationship between survey questions and the total survey error perspective, cognitive versus interactional approaches, interviewing practices, mode and technology, visual aspects of question design, and culture. Considering avenues for future research, we advocate for a decision-oriented framework for thinking about survey questions and their characteristics. The approach we propose distinguishes among various aspects of question characteristics, including question topic, question type and response dimension, conceptualization and operationalization of the target object, question structure, question form, response categories, question implementation, and question wording. Thinking about question characteristics more systematically would allow study designs to take into account relationships among these characteristics and identify gaps in current knowledge.

An article with exactly this same title was published in Social Indicators Research (41:279-304, 1997). The purpose of the current article is to update the findings discussed in that first article. Therefore the abstract published previously is still relevant: The last few decades have been the most crucial and eventful ones in South Africa's history. During this time, the empirical research and knowledge provided by opinion polls yielded much-needed insight into the grass roots of a society in transition, providing an instrument with which to measure the political climate, to observe trends and developments and to give input into the decision-making process of companies and political parties. Although the process of change and political transition still remains difficult to properly define, this article will provide some insight into the attitudes, perceptions and values of the South African public by giving attention to trends that have transpired over the years. Special attention is devoted to perceptions on pertinent issues such as the mood in the country, optimism, economic well-being, social harmony and trust — all essential elements in an emerging democracy. Again, extensive use is made of data and findings from Markinor's bi-annual Socio-Political Trends surveys and the World Values Studies.

Theoretical understanding of survey nonresponse is implicitly heavily behaviourist, concentrating upon researchers' inputs such as follow-up arrangements, and predetermining social role characteristics of sample listings. With the decline over time in response rates, however, the possible importance of social values concerning privacy invasion has been more seriously entertained by methodologists. The paper describes evidence indicating that, in both the USA and Canada, the post-1960's decline in response is not accounted for simply by input explanations. A privacy index is generated by content analyzing British, Canadian, and American newspapers for privacy-related objections to the decennial census. Decade and country, scored according to the privacy index, are then entered into an empirical model for predicting response rate on a survey.