Jeffrey Lyons, an assistant professor of political science and survey research director within the School of Public Service, discussed surveys in the March 3 edition of The Blue Review.
“Surveying Idaho: Five Questions with Jeffrey Lyons” looks at surveys, how they come together and why they matter.
Here’s a sample from the interview:
What kind of impacts have you seen from the survey work you have done?
“We do a number of presentations of our survey work to elected officials at both the state and local level, and we definitely hope that the information we are providing is helpful for understanding what peoples’ policy preferences are. For the most part there is very little publicly available survey data in the state of Idaho, so decisionmakers are often relying on other ways of trying to know what the public thinks such as emails and phone calls from constituents or comments at public hearings. While these are very useful and important, the members of the public who engage in these activities are probably not representative of everyone. So, there have been a number of times where we have presented our results and we see eyebrows raise.”