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December 11, 2006
The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public
Chris Wiggins pointed me to this interesting-looking book by Sarah Igo:
Americans today "know" that a majority of the population supports the death penalty, that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that four out of five prefer a particular brand of toothpaste. Through statistics like these, we feel that we understand our fellow citizens. But remarkably, such data--now woven into our social fabric--became common currency only in the last century. Sarah Igo tells the story, for the first time, of how opinion polls, man-in-the-street interviews, sex surveys, community studies, and consumer research transformed the United States public.. . . Tracing how ordinary people argued about and adapted to a public awash in aggregate data, she reveals how survey techniques and findings became the vocabulary of mass society--and essential to understanding who we, as modern Americans, think we are.
As a survey researcher, this looks interesting to me. Parochially, I'm reminded of our own observation that in the 1950s it was more rational to answer a Gallup poll than to vote. Nowadays, most of us are participants as well as consumers of surveys.
Posted by Andrew at December 11, 2006 2:11 AM
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