Corrections or additions?
This article by Flora Davis was prepared for the September 8, 2004
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
What Do You Think? Gallup Says It Still Matters
In 1936 Princeton resident George Gallup bet his shirt that, by using
scientific methods, he could accurately predict the winner of the
presidential election. He succeeded and achieved instant fame. Thus,
the opinion polling industry was born in the small college town of
Princeton, which became for a time the polling capital of the United
States. In a 1940 book, Gallup laid out his passionate belief that
elected representatives could and should use polling to "monitor the
pulse of democracy" by taking public opinion into account when they
made decisions on the public’s behalf.
Fast forward 64 years to the summer of 2004. Frank Newport,
editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, has just published a new book
called Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the
People (Warner Books). Like Gallup before him, Newport argues that
opinion polling is the way to ensure that the country really is
governed by the will of the people. His book also present evidence
that this is not the way the system works today.
A lot has happened to opinion polling, the political process, and
Princeton in between the two publishing events. Many of those changes
will be evident when Frank Newport gives a talk, followed by a book
signing, at Barnes and Noble at Marketfair on Thursday, September 9,
at 7 p.m.
If you watch television, particularly CNN, Newport’s square-jawed face
will be familiar to you. One of the country’s top pollsters and
pundits, he is featured on CNN’s Gallup Poll segments, broadcast from
the firm’s Carnegie Center office, and is a frequent guest on talk
shows. More than 1,500 radio stations carry his twice-a-week features
about polling. His current role as media spokesman for the Gallup Poll
represents a coming together of his experience in two seemingly
disparate fields: the somewhat arcane science of survey research and
broadcast journalism.
Frank Newport grew up in Texas, the son of a Baptist minister and
theologian. His parents led study tours around the world, particularly
to the Middle East and the Holy Land. Newport was a broadcasting major
at Baylor University, Class of 1970. In fact, he worked his way
through college as a radio announcer and TV sports and news anchor.
While he was doing that, however, he fell in love with sociology, and
he went on to earn a PhD in that discipline at the University of
Michigan. Sociology taught him about scientific surveys, one of the
primary research tools social scientists use.
After a four-year stint teaching at the University of Missouri-St.
Louis, Newport returned to broadcasting as a radio talk show host in
Houston, Texas. In the early 1980s, he took a job with a polling and
market research firm, eventually becoming a partner in the company.
"We did marketing research for TV and radio stations, newspapers and
magazines," he says. The job enabled him to combine his interests in
survey research and journalism.
In the late 1980s a Nebraska corporation, Selection Research, bought
Newport’s firm. The following year it also bought Gallup (founder
George Gallup had died in 1984), and in 1990, Newport moved to
Princeton to become editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. "I would say
that my experience in radio and television probably helps me
communicate poll results more effectively," he says.
Frank Newport’s wife, Kim, is the vice president of the Hopewell
school board, which is pretty much a full-time job, he says. The
Newports have four children. Their oldest son is a nuclear submarine
officer. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, where one of the
Newport daughters is currently enrolled. Their second son worked for
Gallup this last summer but has now moved on to a PhD program at MIT.
U.S. 1 ran an article about the successful website design business he
created while he was in high school (May 4, 2000). The youngest
Newport daughter is a high school senior.
Asked what he does for relaxation, Newport states ruefully that he
"reads about polls on the Internet." Then he recalls that he likes to
hike with his family. In fact, they are "highpointers," and their goal
is to climb to the highest point in every state in the U.S. They share
this esoteric pastime with many other American – Newport mentions the
highpointer clubs and websites on the Internet. So far, his family has
summited in 28 states, not always by climbing. He notes that the
highest point in Delaware is north of Wilmington in the middle of an
intersection. In New Jersey, at High Point (across the Delaware from
Port Jervis, New York), you simply get out of your car and walk 20
feet. In many other states, however, summiting requires rock climbing
or at least a long, steep hike. "I’m not sure we’ll ever do Mt.
McKinley in Alaska," says Newport.
The prestigious Gallup Poll, which Newport heads, provides a very
small part of the revenue that supports the overall Gallup
Organization. The corporation’s bread and butter is the marketing
research it does for business and industry: surveying a Fortune 100
company’s employees, for example, to gauge their morale, or its
customers to find out how satisfied they are. The results are seldom
made public. In contrast, public opinion polling operates according to
ethical standards that dictate that the media and the public have a
right to know not only the results but exactly how the poll was
conducted.
Gallup has always done both market research and opinion polling, as
have most, if not all, polling companies. "Many people don’t know
this," says Newport, "but Dr. George Gallup was actually doing
marketing research for businesses before he began to do polling in the
1930s." For his PhD dissertation, Gallup worked with newspapers,
surveying their readers to find out which articles and news items
interested them. Princeton became the birthplace of public opinion
polling largely because he took a job as head of research for a New
York City ad agency, decided to commute, and bought a farm near
Princeton Airport. Gallup continued to work for the agency while
growing his polling sideline, a firm he founded in 1935 that was
initially called the American Institute of Public Opinion. As the
company grew, it combined opinion surveys and marketing research.
The Gallup poll may have been the mother of all public opinion polls,
but it was not the earliest effort to measure people’s intentions. In
1824, newspapers began to do straw polls before elections. They would
print a sample ballot in the paper and invite readers to clip it and
send in the names of the individuals they intended to vote for.
Sometimes newspapers mailed the ballot instead or had interviewers
accost people in the streets and hand it to them. None of these
haphazard methods reached anything like a representative sample of the
voters.
Modern polling was propelled into the spotlight in 1936 because of a
contest between George Gallup and a weekly called the Literary Digest.
This is a story pollsters love to tell.
From 1916 on, Digest straw polls correctly predicted the winner in
every presidential election. The people who designed them worked on
the theory that all they had to do was send out enough ballots. Every
four years before the presidential election, a staff of several
thousand stuffed millions of sample ballots into envelopes that also
happened to contain subscription offers. The results were surprisingly
accurate.
In the months before the 1936 election, the Digest mailed ballots to
more than 10 million people, and more than 2 million returned them.
The canvassers constructed their mailing list by using phone
directories and lists of car registrations and of Digest subscribers.
At the time, many voters could not afford a car, a phone, or even a
subscription.
In 1936 George Gallup’s tiny, recently hatched polling firm was
located across from Princeton University’s main gate at 90 Nassau
Street in a one-room office furnished with a single desk, a telephone,
and a typewriter. Since the previous year, Gallup had been writing a
weekly column called "America Speaks!" that appeared in newspapers
across the country. In it, he reported on new, nationwide public
opinion polls that investigated what Americans thought about the
issues of the day. Was it indecent for a woman to wear shorts on the
street? Sixty-three percent thought it was. Of course, his polls also
tackled weightier subjects.
Gallup knew that the Digest’s huge samples did not guarantee accuracy.
He himself used a scientific method called quota sampling, and though
it relied on paper ballots, it carefully canvassed a much smaller
number of people chosen because they were representative of the
electorate.
To promote his column, Gallup promised to give subscribing newspapers
their money back if he could not predict the outcome of the 1936
presidential campaign more accurately than the Literary Digest did. He
took a huge risk. He was sampling 15,000 people nationwide (today, a
comparable poll would sample 1,500) and that was expensive. He covered
the cost by selling his column to the newspapers, which would get a
total refund if he was wrong.
In early October, 1936, the Digest’s straw polling predicted a
landslide for Republican Alf Landon, while Gallup’s poll indicated
that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would win easily. Roosevelt was elected
by a margin even greater than Gallup had anticipated. The fact that
the Digest’s massive poll left out low-income voters probably made the
crucial difference. In 1936 in the depths of the Depression, the poor
were drawn to FDR, while those who were comfortably fixed were more
likely to vote Republican.
Though Gallup won his wager, his numbers were far enough off that he
decided never to use mailed ballots again because evidently the "lower
strata" were less likely to return them. From that time on, his
interviewers went door-to-door. During the 1936 election, two other
researchers, Elmo Roper and Archibald Crossley, also polled using the
scientific method and correctly predicted a win for Roosevelt.
In the years that followed, a number of polling firms sprang up in
Princeton, some founded by people who worked with Gallup and then left
to start their own companies. Opinion Research was one, formed in 1938
by Claude Robinson. Princeton became one of the centers of the early
polling industry much as, decades later, Silicon Valley became a
center for high-tech electronics after Hewlett Packard located there.
Gallup quickly became the best-known spokesman for the scientific
method of polling partly because of his insistence that it could play
a vital role in a democracy by monitoring the opinions of ordinary
people. His 1940 book, The Pulse of Democracy, argued that polling
could become the equivalent of a New England town meeting on a
national scale.
However, Gallup faced a lot of skepticism. Despite his triumph in the
1936 election, many people refused to believe that, by questioning a
representative sample of mere thousands of individuals, anyone could
accurately divine the opinions of tens of millions. To prove the
validity of his method, Gallup focused for a time on correctly
forecasting election results.
Gallup and other pioneers of scientific polling used a method known as
quota sampling, which divided the group being studied – the population
of New Jersey, for example – into subgroups according to salient
characteristics: race, gender, age, education, income, and so on. Then
it sampled a much smaller number of individuals in the same
proportions. If 12 percent of New Jersey residents were African
American, for example, polling interviewers made sure that 12 percent
of their respondents were African American. If half of all New
Jerseyans were female, half the respondents must be female, and so on.
As Frank Newport points out in Polling Matters, the problem is that a
poll cannot divide up a population based on every conceivable
characteristic that might be important. If it leaves out income, for
example, then all the blacks in the sample may be suburbanites, and
their opinions may not accurately represent those of African Americans
who live in the inner city.
By the mid 1940s, statisticians were insisting that quota sampling was
flawed, partly because interviewers could unconsciously bias the
results by approaching mostly the kind of people they were comfortable
with. The interviewers tended to be middle class. As a result, the
polls reflected a slight bias supporting Republican positions on
policy issues, and Gallup’s presidential forecasts tended to
overestimate the Republican vote.
The statisticians argued that a method called random sampling was more
accurate, but Gallup, Roper and Crossley, among others, resisted the
change to this more costly technique. Newport explains that, to do
random sampling, a polling organization might take a list of every
resident in New Jersey and interview every one hundredth person on it.
Every member of the population would then have an equal chance of
becoming part of the sample. No one in any category would be
systematically overlooked, and the mix of people in the sample would
be much more likely to reflect the mix in the population.
National polls today use random sampling and interview just 1,000 to
1,500 individuals. According to Newport, studies have shown that
random samples of 1,000 or even less have a high probability of
accurately representing the population from which they are drawn,
regardless of how big that population is. This statistical magic may
remind the lay person of the old saw, "There are lies, damned lies,
and statistics." However, the method has been thoroughly vindicated
over the years.
Back in the mid 1940s, a congressional investigation simultaneously
praised Gallup for pioneering the science of polling and criticized
him because he had not switched to random sampling. Then came the 1948
presidential race, a debacle for pollsters. On the eve of the
election, the Gallup, Roper and Crossley polls all showed Dewey ahead
by at least 10 points. Before the actual results came in, a number of
publications went to press with stories about Dewey’s victory. When
Truman won, that called polling’s reliability into question. Trust in
it was not fully restored until the 1960s.
During that decade, campaign polling took off as politicians began to
commission surveys to pick up information they could use to win an
election. Exit polls were invented in the mid 1960s: interviewers,
stationed near polling places, approached people to find out who they
had just voted for. Media polls got their start in 1967, when CBS
became the first news organization to establish its own polling
operation.
Over the years, new technologies changed the way surveys are done, and
the campaign pollsters were among the beneficiaries. The advent of
computers and statistical software, for example, offered quick and
easy ways to analyze the electorate. In 1972, the Nixon campaign used
them to map every voting precinct in the nation and identify the
blocks where swing voters lived.
According to Frank Newport, however, the humble telephone was the
instrument of "the biggest change yet in modern polling." The
transition from face-to-face interviews, conducted in respondents’
homes, to phone polls finally happened in the 1980s. By that time,
most American households had a telephone and direct dialing was
available. Polling organizations happily made the switch because phone
interviews are less costly and can provide almost instantaneous
results.
Today, political campaigns poll almost constantly, using computers and
phones, to find out where candidates need to put in more effort – for
example, whether to invest the next three days in Iowa or New
Hampshire. Polling also identifies the themes that voters respond to
and the best ways to present them. According to Newport, the surveys
that politicians commission are highly accurate but are intended for
internal consumption only. He notes, however, that sometimes the
pollsters are not above leaking partial results to the press to try to
make their candidate look good.
Despite all the polling politicians do during campaigns, few pay
attention to polls between elections, says Newport. They do not
commission surveys to find out where the public stands on issues, nor
do they pay much attention to other people’s polls.
"That’s one of the major reasons I wanted to write my book," Newport
explains, "to say we have to look at these things differently. Polling
is a brilliant, miraculous, scientific tool if used correctly, and the
collective voices of the public can be the single best way to guide
our society." He believes it is a mistake to put control in the hands
of the elite and ignore the voice of the people.
But are the people wise? In Polling Matters, Newport writes that,
"Americans in a randomly selected poll sample come from all areas and
walks of life. . . The blend of the experience and background that is
accessed provides an extraordinarily valuable resource to use in
directing and guiding the society’s progress."
Newport notes that many politicians value their own personal judgment
more than they do the views of the people they represent. They are
proud of the fact that they do not consult the polls when making
decisions. While campaigning in 2000, George W. Bush said, "I don’t
need polls to tell me how to think. If elected president, I will not
use my office to reflect public opinion." Many years earlier, Winston
Churchill, Britain’s famous prime minister, stated that, "Nothing is
more dangerous than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a
Gallup poll, always taking one’s temperature. There is only one duty,
only one safe course, and that is to be right and not to fear to do or
say what you believe to be right."
Traditionally, Americans admire loners and innovative thinkers. In
addition, as a nation, we have been debating how much weight elected
representatives should give to public opinion since 1787 and 1788,
when the Federalist Papers first outlined what an American democracy
might look like.
Newport, however, believes that being elected does not make anyone a
genius overnight, and that when a lot of average people’s opinions are
combined, they can add up to great wisdom. He does not argue that
politicians should slavishly follow the dictates of public opinion –
only that they should track it and take it into account between
elections.
Elected officials often say they do not need to consult polls because
they are constantly bombarded with letters, phone calls and E-mails
from voters, and in addition they meet their constituents face-to-face
whenever they get back to their district. It is paradoxical, Newport
says, that politicians are proud of doing all those things and yet are
unwilling to look at scientific polls, which offer a much more
accurate reflection of voters’ concerns and opinions. Meanwhile,
elected representatives accept input from lobbyists, special
interests, and party leaders – hardly a random sample of their
constituents.
Not surprisingly, studies show that elected representatives often do
not vote the way the people they represent want them to. Newport cites
one of the more dramatic examples: In 1998 members of the House of
Representatives chose to impeach President Bill Clinton even though
almost every poll showed that the majority of Americans did not agree
with that decision.
According to surveys, Americans today have little confidence in
Congress. In fact, the public rates its elected representatives in
Washington, D.C., only slightly above lawyers and car salesmen for
honesty and ethics. Newport believes that voter turnout is low partly
because people see no point in voting since the individuals they elect
will probably ignore their wishes once they are in office. He also
notes that at least 27 states now permit direct initiatives and
referendums because the people distrust their representatives. The
recall of California’s governor in 2003 would appear to reflect the
same loss of confidence. The deposed governor, Gray Davis, said
afterward, "I didn’t stay in touch with the people. That’s clearly my
biggest regret."
Newport cites a study that found that an overwhelming majority of
Americans believe public opinion should have more of an influence over
government decisions. "The public’s feeling of being marginalized from
government decision making is now at an all time high," he writes.
Nevertheless, many people remain skeptical about opinion polling. How
does a poll randomly sample 200 million American adults by telephone,
especially since as many as 30 percent of phone numbers are unlisted?
Newport’s book explains: Even an unlisted number has to have an area
code and exchange – for example, the area code for Princeton is 609,
and for many local phones, the exchange is 924. Within any given area
code and exchange, there are 10,000 combinations for the last four
digits. A computer can list all of those and can do it for all the
area codes and exchanges in the country. Every phone number then has
an equal chance of getting into the sample.
Let us say that a polling organization randomly selects 2,000
households from the national phone list, a sample intended to
represent 100 million households all over the country. Interviewers
start to contact them. Some numbers turn out to be non-working; other
calls are answered by businesses, rather than by individuals at home.
That brings the sample down to 1,600. Another 400 numbers are useless
because they are fax lines or there is no answer. That leaves the poll
with 1,200 telephone numbers where interviewers reach a live human
being. If 200 decline to participate in the poll, that still leaves a
sample of 1,000, and 1,000 is enough.
Newport readily acknowledges that the wording of a polling question
can influence the response. In fact, his book gives numerous examples.
He argues, however, that responses impacted by wording can actually
help pollsters understand how the public views complex issues. For
instance, when asked if they favor the death penalty for a person
convicted of murder, 74 percent of Americans generally say yes. If
they are asked instead, "Which is the better penalty for murder, death
or life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole?" only
53 percent will choose death.
This suggests to Newport that the "gut instinct" for the majority of
Americans is to support the death penalty, but that some are not at
all adamant about it and prefer life imprisonment with no possibility
of parole when that is suggested as an alternative.
The fact that the perceived race of the interviewer can affect polling
results can also be illuminating. The effect is small, Newport says,
and happens only with certain race-sensitive issues. On a question
about affirmative action, white respondents may give slightly
different answers depending on whether they believe the interviewer is
also white or is African American. "That shows that there’s a norm out
there in society that tells whites that you should express more
race-sensitive responses to blacks than to whites. That’s fascinating
to me," Newport says.
Not all polls are trustworthy. Asked what citizens should watch out
for during the presidential election campaign, Newport suggests that,
when presented with survey results, people consider who sponsored and
conducted the poll. Reputable firms like Gallup might make an
occasional mistake, but they use scientific methods and try hard to do
a good and accurate job. Poll results from unknown organizations
should be treated with more caution.
Secondly, Newport suggests looking at the wording of questions in
conjunction with the results. "There’s no such thing as a right or
wrong question," he states, "but each question carries with it certain
emphases and you need to understand the answers in that context." On
abortion, if the question is "Do you favor or oppose a woman killing a
baby in the womb?" the results will be different from responses to a
question that asks, "Do you favor or oppose a woman having the right
to choose in pregnancy?" By looking at the results of the two
questions together, survey analysts learn that public opinion moves
within a 20 point range based on what part of the argument is
emphasized, reflecting the complexity of American attitudes on the
issue.
Newport cautions against polls that ask one question about a topic
such as abortion and then state categorically that the majority of
Americans believe one thing or another. Pollsters need to ask a number
of questions and then repeat them over time, he says, to understand
the nuances of public opinion and track changes in it. "Public opinion
is important and understandable if we take the time to figure it out,"
he states, "but that’s not simple and not easy. If you ask me, where
does America stand on abortion or on the war in Iraq, you have to give
me a while to describe that for you."
Opinion polling is apparently a growth industry today, and it has
actually been helped by the no-call lists that are the bane of
telemarketers. Protected from the onslaught of sales calls, people now
cooperate more readily with a credible request to participate in a
poll. In fact, Newport says that more opinion polls are being done
today than ever before, and there are more media outlets for them.
At the moment, the greater Princeton area has 50 companies,
representing nearly 1,300 jobs, that do opinion polling and/or market
research. In one way or another, many of them spun off from Gallup, a
phenomenon that is still occurring. Just 14 or 15 years ago, Newport
recalls, Andy Kohut, president of the Gallup Organization, left to
found Princeton Survey Research Associates, now at 911 Commons Way.
Kohut has since moved on and is now director of the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press in Washington, D.C.
Despite Princeton’s current plethora of survey firms, however, it is
no longer the polling capital of the United States, says Newport. As
companies have grown large or have been bought by other corporations,
they have located their headquarters and interviewing centers
elsewhere. For example, though the Gallup Poll proudly maintains its
historic presence in Princeton – Newport noted that Dr. Gallup’s sons
Alec and George Jr. still work there – its corporate headquarters are
now in Washington, D.C. The largest number of the company’s employees
work in its offices in Omaha.
How will opinion polling change in the future? "I have no doubt that
in one way or the other, we will be relying more the Internet,"
Newport says. Gallup uses it now for marketing research, but not for
general opinion polls. The problem is that 30 percent or more of
Americans are not active users of E-mail, so one-third of the
population has no chance of falling into the sample on an E-mail
survey, he explains. Of course, Internet polls are conducted all the
time and organizations announce with great fanfare that they have
tallied tens of thousands of responses, but they are not a random
sample. In fact, such polls mainly attract people who weigh in on a
subject because they have strong feelings about it.
The second problem with the Internet, Newport continues, is that, even
if most Americans were E-mail addicts, there is no master list of all
E-mail addresses that can be used to create a random sample. Internet
polling works beautifully for marketing research, however. If a
company with 1,000 employees hires Gallup to ascertain how motivated
its workers are and provides their E-mail addresses, researchers can
easily survey all of them.
Newport predicts that eventually there will be a national registry of
E-mail addresses. Then there will come a tipping point: Random
sampling will become possible because enough Americans will be regular
users of E-mail. Most pollsters would like to use the Internet for
surveys, he says, because it is quicker and much cheaper.
Newport’s second prediction about the future of opinion polling is
that legislators will finally begin to consult polls between
elections. They will probably not commission surveys themselves. As he
argues in his book, they can simply employ a professional pollster on
their staff to track public opinion on the issues by analyzing data
that is available from companies like Gallup.
When that happens, argues Newport, we all will be much better off than
we are now.
Top Of Page
Who’s Who in Market Research
In greater Princeton more than 30 companies devote themselves
exclusively to market research, and when you count companies that
include market research as one of their offered services, the total
grows to 50 – in all they employ nearly 1,300 people. The list
includes the general marketing firms, as listed in the U.S. 1 Business
Directory, and the companies that do pharmaceutical marketing. Also
listed here are some companies that are related to the market research
field but that do not fit into a standard category.
The listings are based on a survey taken in February and published in
the U.S. 1 Business Directory in April.
American Opinion Research, 279 Wall Street, Research Park, Princeton
08540. Anthony M. Casale, CEO. Founded 1979. Staff size: 22.
609-683-9055; fax, 609-683-8398. Home page: www.imsworld.com
Aurora Marketing Inc., 66 Witherspoon Street, Suite 600, Princeton
08542. Doreen V. Blanc PhD, president. Founded 1986. Staff size: 4.
908-904-1125; fax, 908-359-1108. Home page: www.auroramarketing.net
Braun Research Inc., 271 Wall Street, Princeton 08540. Paul A. Braun,
president. Founded 1995. Staff size: 32. 609-279-1600; fax,
609-279-0381. Home page: www.braunresearch.com
Bruno & Ridgway Research Associates Inc., 3131 Princeton Pike,
Building 2A, Lawrenceville 08648-2207. Joseph M. Ridgway, president.
Founded 1970. Staff size: 47. 609-895-9889; fax, 609-895-6665. Home
page: www.brra.com
David Burnett & Associates (DBA Group), 106 West Franklin Avenue,
Straube Center, Pennington 08534. David Burnett, president. Founded
1992. Staff size: 5. 609-737-2324; fax, 609-737-2453. Home page:
Data Vision Research Inc., 114 West Franklin Avenue, Building K19-3,
Pennington 08534. Ronald Vangi, president. Founded 1983. Staff size:
3. 609-818-1944; fax, 609-987-9120. Home page: www.dvrinc.com
Design Research, 133 Franklin Corner Road, Box 6086, Lawrenceville
08648. Rick Babick, president. Founded 1998. Staff size: 6.
609-896-1108; fax, 609-896-3016. Www.DesignRes.com
The Gallup Organization, 502 Carnegie Center, Suite 300, Princeton
08540. James K. Clifton, chairman and CEO. Founded 1935. Staff size:
42. 609-924-9600; fax, 609-279-2540. Home page: www.gallup.com
Gallup & Robinson, 24 North Main Street, Pennington 08534-2296. Scott
Purvis, president. Founded 1948. Staff size: 20. 609-730-1550; fax,
609-730-1566. Home page: www.gallup-robinson.com.
Global Quality Research Corporation, 116 Village Boulevard, Suite 200,
Princeton 08540. Miguel Basanez, president. Founded 2000.
609-818-1531; fax, 609-818-1529.
Guthrie & Company, 65 South Main Street, Building A, Pennington 08534.
John Guthrie, president. Founded 1988. Staff size: 2. 609-818-0073;
fax, 609-818-0074.
Harris Interactive (HPOL), 5 Independence Way, Princeton Corporate
Center 4th floor, Box 5305, Princeton 08543-5305. Albert Angrisani,
COO. Founded 1975. Staff size: 150. 609-520-9100; fax, 609-987-8839.
Home page: www.harrisinteractive.com
Hase/Schannen Research Associates Inc., 231 Clarksville Road, Suite 2,
Box 2061, Princeton 08543-2061. Paul F. Hase, president. Founded 1975.
Staff size: 24. 609-799-3939; fax, 609-799-4134. Home page:
Mapes and Ross Inc., 176 Wall Street, Princeton 08540-1583. Harold
Ross, president. Founded 1972. Staff size: 20. 609-924-8600; fax,
609-924-9208. Home page: www.mapesandross.com
Marketing Research Services Group, 451 Wall Street, Princeton 08540.
Mel Fink, president. Founded 1991. Staff size: 5. 609-497-1299; fax,
609-497-1538.
Matrix Inc., 3490 Route 1, Princeton 08540. Jacob Katz, president.
Founded 1974. Staff size: 7. 609-452-0099; fax, 609-452-8644.
Monument Information Resource/Bowker, 713 Executive Drive, Montgomery
Commons, Princeton 08540. Manuel Guzman, president. Founded 1994.
609-430-9494; fax, 609-430-9495.
Multi-Sponsor Surveys, 136 Wall Street, Second Floor, Princeton 08540.
Leonard Wood, president. Founded 1989. Staff size: 21. 609-924-7772;
fax, 609-924-1119. Www.multi-sponsorsurveys.com
NOP World Consumer Sector (UNEWY), 1060 State Road, Box 158, Princeton
08542-0158. Brad Fay, group senior vice president. Founded 1923. Staff
size: 140. 609-683-6100; fax, 609-683-6211. Home page:
Formerly Response Analysis and Roper Starch, part of United Business
Media.
The Olson Research Group Inc., 300 Phillips Boulevard, Suite 100,
Ewing 08618. Charles A. Olson, president. Founded 1995. Staff size:
35. 609-882-9888; fax, 609-882-9826. Www.olsonresearchgroup.com
Opinion Research Corporation (ORCI), 600 College Road, Box 183,
Princeton 08542-0183. John F. Short, CEO. Founded 1938. Staff size:
55. 609-452-5400; fax, 609-419-1892. Www.opinionresearch.com
PRISM, 66 Dempsey Avenue, Princeton 08540. Richard B. Reichart, owner.
Founded 1990. Staff size: 1. 609-924-6492; fax, 609-921-9132. Home
page:
Jack Paxton & Associates, 4 Jefferson Court, Princeton 08540. Jack
Paxton, president. Founded 1989. Staff size: 2. 732-329-2268; fax,
732-329-1372. Home page: www.jackpaxton.com
Princeton Brand Econometrics LLC, 212 Carnegie Center, Suite 110,
Princeton 08540. S. Kent Stephan, CEO. Founded 1991. Staff size: 11.
609-987-1111; fax, 609-987-0588. Home page: www.pbeco.com
Princeton Hightech Group, 7 Ascot Place, North Brunswick 08902. Dinesh
Pandya, president. Founded 1984. Staff size: 4. 732-545-8795.
Princeton Research & Consulting Center Inc., 12 Roszel Road, Suite
C-103, Princeton 08540. Leon B. Kaplan, president. Founded 1979. Staff
size: 4. 609-520-1141; fax, 609-520-1790.
RL Associates, 601 Ewing Street, Suite A-11 Princeton Professional
Park, Princeton 08540. Michael Rappeport, president. Founded 1978.
Staff size: 6. 609-683-9200; fax, 609-683-0855.
Ronin Development Corp., 2 Research Way, Princeton 08540. Harry F.
Bunn, CEO. Founded 1986. Staff size: 11. 609-452-0060; fax,
609-452-0091. Home page: www.ronin.com
Schrader Research & Rating Service, 1260 South River Road, Cranbury
08512. Al Ochsner, CEO. Founded 1952. Staff size: 10. 609-395-1200;
fax, 609-655-8640.
Sports Business Research Network, 24 Magnolia Court, Lawrenceville
08648. Richard A. Lipsey, president. Founded 1996. 609-896-1996; fax,
609-896-1903. Www.sbrnet.com
TNS Intersearch, Taylor Nelson Sofres, 101 College Road East,
Princeton 08540. 609-919-2727; fax, 609-919-1191. Home page:
Turtle Bay Institute Inc., 195 Nassau Street, Princeton 08542.
Kathleen Murphy, president. Founded 1971. Staff size: 5. 609-688-9640;
fax, 609-688-9644.
Zeldis Research, 106 West Franklin Avenue, Straube Center Suite 105,
Pennington 08534. Ken Zeldis & Doris Kaiser, owners. Founded 1991.
Staff size: 6. 609-737-7223; fax, 609-737-9272. Home page:
Marketing
Hugh J. Devine & Associates, 49 Krebs Road, Plainsboro 08536. Hugh
Devine, owner. Founded 1996. 609-799-8170; fax, 609-799-7364.
Sylvester Consulting Group, 20 Nassau Street, Suite 200, Princeton
08540. Derek Sylvester, president. Founded 1996. Staff size: 3.
609-430-8350; fax, 609-430-8351. Home page: www.sylvestergroup.com
WDA Marketing and Management, 116 Village Boulevard, Suite 200,
Princeton 08540. William D’Arienzo, CEO. Founded 1985. Staff size: 6.
609-734-4302; fax, 609-734-4307. Home page: www.wdamarketing.com
Pharmaceutical Marketing
ACNielsen/HCI, 50 Millstone Road, Building 100, Suite 300, East
Windsor 08520. C. Marshall Paul, president. Staff size: 17.
609-630-6450; fax, 609-630-6456. Www.acnielsenhci.com
Division of New York-based VNU, associated with PERQ/HCI.
Consumer Health Sciences, 165 Wall Street, Princeton 08540. Jane A.
Donohue, CEO. Founded 1996. Staff size: 20. 609-924-4455; fax,
609-924-7794. Www.chsinternational.com
PERQ/HCI Research, 50 Millstone Road, Building 100, Suite 300, East
Windsor 08520. George Carens, general manager. Founded 1982. Staff
size: 43. 609-630-6440; fax, 609-630-6456. Www.perq-hci.com
TNS Healthcare, 101 College Road East, Princeton 08540. Craig Parker,
office manager. Founded 1980. Staff size: 50. 609-806-4100; fax,
609-806-4101.
Division of National Family Opinion Research, formerly Migliara
Kaplan.
Biovid Corp., 5 Vaughn Drive, Suite 111, Princeton 08540-6313. Andrew
D. Aprill, president. Founded 1999. Staff size: 8. 609-750-1400; fax,
609-750-1466. Home page: www.biovid.com
Close-Up International, 116 Village Boulevard, Forrestal Village,
Suite 200, Princeton 08540. Guillermo Orlanski, general manager. Staff
size: 1. 609-734-4306; fax, 609-734-7450. Www.closeupinternational.net
Isis Research U.S./Synovate Healthcare, 2 Wall Street, Princeton
08540. Linda Levy, president. Founded 1998. Staff size: 15.
609-688-0474; fax, 609-688-0435. Home page: www.isisresearch.com
NOP World Health (UNEWY), 1060 State Road, Princeton 08540. Barry
Zimmerman, CEO. Founded 1997. Staff size: 40. 609-683-6333; fax,
609-683-6211. Home page: www.nopworld.com
ORYX Group, 114 West Franklin Avenue, Straube Center, Suite 19.2,
Pennington 08534. Anne Miller, owner. Founded 1992. Staff size: 2.
609-818-1001; fax, 609-818-1010.
Social R&D
Mathematica Policy Research Inc., 600 Alexander Park, Suite 100,
Princeton 08540. Charles E. Metcalf, president. Founded 1968. Staff
size: 300. 609-799-3535; fax, 609-799-0005. Home page:
Princeton Survey Research Associates International LLC, 911 Commons
Way, Montgomery Commons, Princeton 08540. Evans Witt, president.
Founded 1989. Staff size: 15. 609-924-9204; fax, 609-924-7499.
Richard B. Reading Associates, 759 State Road, Princeton 08540.
Richard B. Reading, owner. Founded 1975. Staff size: 6. 609-924-6622;
fax, 609-924-1628.
Market Research Software
P-STAT Inc., 230 Lambertville-Hopewell Road, Hopewell 08525-2809.
Shirrell Buhler, president. Founded 1979. Staff size: 5. 609-466-9200;
fax, 609-466-1688. Home page: www.pstat.com
Princeton Cybernetics Inc., 301 North Harrison Street, Suite 159,
Princeton 08540. Philip Berg. Founded 1998. Staff size: 2.
609-924-7114; fax, 609-921-3561. Home page: www.princetoncyber.com
Datan Inc., 79 Tamarack Circle, Skillman 08558. Michael C. Stentz PhD,
president. Founded 1983. Staff size: 8. 609-921-6098; fax,
609-921-6731. Www.datan.com
Competitive Intelligence
Becker Intelligence, 55 Hamilton South, Plainsboro 08536. Richard
Telofski, president. 609-799-6490.
Brivea LLC, 108 Stanhope Street, Princeton Forrestal Village,
Princeton 08540. Raymond S. Barratt, president. Founded 2002. Staff
size: 5. 609-452-2828; fax, 609-452-8998. Home page: www.brivea.com
InSearch, 14 Cartwright Drive West, Princeton Junction 08550. Melissa
Pankove, president. Founded 1997. Staff size: 1. 609-799-8230; fax,
609-606-3093.
Trade Group
American Association for Public Opinion Research, 271 Wall Street,
Princeton 08540. Paul Braun, president. Founded 1995. 609-279-1600;
fax, 609-279-1318. Home page: www.braunresearch.com Marketing research firm with 200 members.
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