New technology powers opinion polling Peter Spencer      Ed Freeland (standing), associate director of the Survey Research Center, supervises student telephone interviewers on a recent evening. The center currently is involved in its first national telephone survey using new state-of-the-art opinion polling technology. Princeton, NJ -- The latest technology for opinion polling has arrived on campus in the form of a black cube no bigger than a briefcase. The nondescript computer sits on the desk of Ed Freeland, associate director of the Survey Research Center in the Woodrow Wilson School. The center provides opinion-polling services to faculty, students and staff across the University. Freeland presided over the purchase and installation of the new system and the center's move from Robertson Hall to new, larger quarters at 169 Nassau St. last summer. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 1992 and returned to campus in 1998 after working in the survey research industry. Freeland explains that the computer can collect thousands of telephone numbers, distribute them at random to the center's telephone operators, dial the numbers automatically, recycle those numbers for reuse when no one answers, and quickly process the information taken from the resulting interviews. The whole scope of the center's services has been vastly expanded, he says, marking a wholesale reduction in the waste and inefficiency of old-fashioned hand-dialed telephone polling and paper questionnaires. "We can collect data one night and sit down and run tables the next morning," he says. "We have 12 stations and a supervisor all tied to the network, and now we're beginning our first big national telephone survey." For considerably less than any commercial surveying firm could charge, the center can deliver state-of-the-art surveying to the Princeton community using up to 60 student telephone interviewers. The study now running is a project of three politics faculty members in the Woodrow Wilson School. "We're looking at the impact of candidate information on voters' decisions," assistant professor Tali Mendelberg explains, "to figure out what kind of language works and in what ways. "We've manufactured several different candidate profiles," she continues. "Then we read the information about a candidate, and see how much people remember. Some people get one kind of description, one that highlights certain aspects, some get others. The beauty of this is that each respondent is randomly designated (by the computer) to get a particular vignette." The study, which is not aligned with any particular candidate or party, began Feb. 19 and should continue until spring break. "For 1,000 completed interviews, we'll use 8,000 to 10,000 telephone numbers," says Freeland. "We need to dial all those numbers because so many of our calls result in non-contacts. This isn't necessarily due to people refusing to participate in our survey. The problem comes mainly from answering machines, call blocking, and non-working phone numbers that ring and never get answered. All these things make it harder to reach the households that are chosen for our sample." Even with all the high-tech activity whirling around him, Freeland is already looking ahead to the SRC's next frontier. "Web-based surveys are the next step," he says, "because you can look at the data as it's coming in." In addition to offering Web-based surveys, the center will have its own new Web site within six weeks. The site will help spread the word about the center's services and assist those who want to use them. "Because Princeton is a 'wired' community, within the next few weeks our student interviewers will be able to use the survey center's Web site to go through a set of orientation materials, download practice versions of electronic questionnaires, and schedule their work hours," he says. "The Web site also can be used by students who would like to sign up to work as interviewers (or) students and faculty who would like to get basic information on how to design and implement their own surveys," he says. The site's future Web address will be www.wws.princeton.edu/~psrc/. The Survey Research Center was founded in 1992. Its faculty director is economics professor Alan Krueger. Other recent projects the center has administered include a campuswide survey of undergraduate and graduate students gauging satisfaction with the University's health-care system. The center also surveyed every public and private school in Florida, asking principals how schools are changing in the wake of the state's school-voucher program. For more information about the Survey Research Center, call 258-1854. Related article Lectures focus on U.S. Census top		[an error occurred while processing this directive]