Health

Polling as a discipline has its roots as much in media as in academic research and therefore has always utilized its capacity for rapid turnaround of research to respond to current events. The deep involvement of media organizations in the funding and design of many major surveys and the short time from fieldwork to release – unlike the common academic practice of releasing research results with the publication of a journal article – means many polls follow the news and resulting public discourse.

Over the years, in responding to public concerns about their end-of-life care, professional and lay groups have proposed making various choices available to individuals at the end of their lives.  The public supports, at least in principle, the availability of many of these choices.  However, fewer Americans recommend some of these choices in specific circumstances.

Two years removed from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans’ social, economic, and political lives have been forever changed by the rapid digitalization brought on by social distancing measures. An absence of in-person contact left many Americans to turn to their own devices — quite literally — to maintain their social connections and seek information on the coronavirus pandemic as it developed. 

The early days of public opinion research captured Americans’ response to the first major efforts by the U.S. government to provide health care to its citizens, an undertaking that saw success in the passage of Medicare in 1965

Water Crisis: Worry and a Lack of Trust

Headlines about lead poisoning from contaminated water in Flint, Michigan ask how such a thing could happen here.

Fifty years ago, just five years after the FDA approved the first birth control pill, the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut state law that prohibited the use of “any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception,” thereby making birth control legal nationwide for married couples.

Mental health care in the U.S. underwent significant changes over the past decade

Where We Live - WNPR by Lydia Brown (John Dankosky and Chion Wolf contributed to this show) It’s been just ...

The news stories now follow a familiar pattern: an outbreak of a new and frightening disease on another continent, the first cases found in the U.S., the speculation about the risk to the American population

Obesity has been called a major health crisis and a national epidemic. Health authorities, including prominent spokespeople like Michelle Obama and the Surgeon General, have sounded the alarm, and the media has responded with a bombardment of stories about the state of the nation’s waistline. But does the American public understand the significance of the country’s weight issue? Or have people become so accustomed to the “new normal” of excess weight that they don’t recognize the problem? From the Roper Center for Public Opinion Archives.

Where We Live – WNPR

Public Perspective, May/June 2003. In the past decade, we have seen the power of the public's ability to say "no" ...

Public Perspective, September/October 1994. For the last several years, and intensely over the Clinton administration's first 20 months, the U.S ...

Public opinion polls reveal that from the late 20th through the early 21st century, the federal government’s role in providing health care services has been a highly salient and contentious issue.