Survey Climate and Trust in Scientific Surveys: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

When assessing the survey climate in the mid-1940s, a poll on the polls documented the American public’s high level of confidence in scientific surveys with respect to survey methodology and trust in survey results. This picture has dramatically changed since then in United States of America and elsewhere, as concerns such as over-surveying, declining response rates, the problem of professional respondents, failures of polls to predict elections results, new privacy regulations, and increasing costs have presented various challenges, which scientific surveys struggle to overcome. This special issue presents seven empirical contributions to the study of the survey climate, with data from six countries to depict various aspects of the survey climate and illustrating the interactions between surveys and society. Four contributions address methodological challenges, particularly in relation to an enhanced understanding and documentation of survey nonresponse, whereas three contributions focus on public trust in official statistics and reports of survey results. Overall, we view this special issue as a starting point of a continued documentation of developments related to the survey climate and discussions on how scientific rigor can be maintained in an increasingly challenging societal environment.