The Context of Public Opinion: How our Belief Systems can Affect Poll Results

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Abstract
Public opinion is embedded in underlying societal beliefs—a social paradigm—and these organize the way that people perceive and interpret the functioning of the world around them. Paradigms are so fundamental as to be taken for granted, but they do change. Evidence is presented that modern industrial societies now are undergoing a paradigm shift; substantial proportions of the public are now operating on the basis of one or more new paradigms. Public opinion analysts no longer can take for granted the belief paradigm that had been our context for opinion. Instead they must investigate paradigms and take them into account in the design and analysis of opinion studies.

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