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About the Scripps Survey Research CenterAmerica's first Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, was called before the House Judiciary Committee early in his term of office and asked to respond to the results of a national poll. "Ohio University has completed a survey that found only one in five knows the current threat condition, which is yellow, right," Congressman Spencer Bachus asked Ridge. "Correct. Um, I'm sure you would have been upset if I didn't know that," Ridge replied carefully. "We have a lot of work to do and the poll reflects that." The findings were an embarrassment for a White House that had worked hard for several months to explain its five-color threat assessment system intended to tell Americans of the danger posed by terrorism. The color codes became comical fodder for late night talk show hosts and political cartoonists. But the poll confirmed a widely held suspicion in Washington, D.C., that very few people understood the warning system. That finding was just the latest in a series of unusual, sometimes irreverent and intriguing surveys conducted by a unique partnership between the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and the Scripps Howard News Service. Since 1992, this partnership has conducted reliable public opinion research with an edge, asking questions that have never been asked before. The Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University was founded by two veteran pollsters: newspaper reporter Thomas Hargrove and Distinguished Journalism Professor Guido H. Stempel III. Among the questions they've asked over the years:
Hundreds of questions have been asked of tens of thousands of randomly selected adults over the years. The results have appeared in nearly 400 daily newspapers, on network television talk shows, even in the pages of the National Enquirer tabloid and Skeptical Inquirer magazine. |
Guido H. Stempel III is director of the Scripps Survey Research Center and distinguished professor emeritus at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism (Ohio University) where he has been since 1965. Stempel has conducted surveys for more than 40 years for newspapers, school systems and academic research projects. He was editor of Journalism Quarterly for 17 years and is co-author and co-editor of three textbooks on comunication research including Mass Communication Theory and Research. He also is co-author and editor of three books on political communcation and the author of more than 150 articles in academic and professional publications. He received his bachelor's degree in 1949 and a masters in 1951 in journalism from Indiana University and his Ph.D in mass communication in 1954 from the University of Wisconsin.
Thomas K. Hargrove is director of survey research for Scripps Howard News Service and a frequent consultant on polling and quantified research for newspapers and television stations owned by the E.W. Scripps Co. He is also a veteran newspaper reporter, former White House correspondent and investigative journalist specializing in database research. Hargrove has conducted extensive research into election irregularities in America, including a series of articles about incompetently maintained voter registration lists and absentee ballot abuses that prompted passage of reform legislation by the Alabama Legislature in 1988. He received a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri in 1977, and has taken post-graduate studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Syracuse University and at the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut. |
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