Labor | Issue | Political

Lake Research Partners has done a great deal of research on public attitudes toward a range of issues at state, national and international levels, using a variety of research methods, including surveys, elite interviews, one-on-ones, focus groups, dial groups, and mini focus groups. This wide array of tools has made us one of the leaders in opinion research, and provided us with tremendous depth of understanding of the public dynamics of issues over time, across regions, and across demographic groups.

Qualitative Research (Focus Groups):

Focus groups provide a rich, textured appraisal of people's attitudes. Focus groups are structured but open-ended discussions, which permit the exploration of thought processes at a deeper level than does quantitative research. In essence, they are idea generators. In a survey, people must resolve their ambivalence; they must answer our questions with a yes or a no. In a focus group, people can give free rein to their ambivalence; they can fully express why their real answer is maybe. These groups allow us to explore participants' concerns in their own words; determine their intensity of interest; and discover the sources of their ideas and opinions. Because focus groups cannot be projected onto a larger universe, they are not a substitute for survey work. Rather they are a powerful aid and supplement.

Our focus groups explore the language and emotions of people's perceptions. They go below the surface views identified by surveys and show how people put ideas together and think about things. The groups explore the often subtle and hidden stereotypes and assumptions that people have. Our analysis of these strata of opinions helps us to choose the most salient messages to test in a survey, the framing of these messages, the symbols and language to use, and the linkage to make with broader views and attitudes.

We strongly believe that our focus groups are better than the competition's because our attention to group dynamics is unmatched by any other firm. We believe in separating racial and gender groups in order to insure the most open and honest discussions and to be sensitive to the cultural differences. It is critical in focus groups to ensure homogeneity within the group along demographic and attitudinal dimensions that are correlated with the topic to encourage the fullest participation. We also racially match our moderators to the groups, which again allows for a more open discussion. With a trained moderator following detailed, written guidelines, audiotaping, an additional on-site analyst, and with an in-depth analysis of the transcripts, we are able to explore people's perceptions and their attitudes in a way that would not be possible in a telephone survey and at levels which other firms do not.

Quantitative Research (Surveys):

Surveys allow us to quantify findings and to project these findings onto the population at large. They also allow us to see which messages play better with different segments of the population and thus will allow us to refine potential messages. We believe our surveys are better than the competition's because we pay careful attention to language and use experimental design to figure out which messages are the strongest. We segment the population and look at the impact of messages and strategy.

In our surveys, we pay close attention to language and to question order, and we use carefully crafted questionnaire designs in order to identify the best messages as well as the best targets for those messages. We want to know what the public thinks now, but we also want to identify the best strategies for communicating a persuasive message to them, and we want to identify the kinds of people we have the best chance of persuading. We frequently use experimental designs. These are survey techniques which actually simulate a political or advertising campaign, measuring how voters react to the various messages they might hear during the course of the campaign.

Our methodology emphasizes multivariate analysis to explore the most powerful messages and to learn which cleavages divide the public. Our analysis goes beyond the traditional examination of men and women, to look at clusters of people to whom messages should be targeted. For example, we might find that a cluster of younger, dual-income college-educated non-natives with children may be very different in attitudes from native, blue collar non-college sportsmen -- but still find messages that can appeal to both.