The Public Purpose

Researching How Americans Think about Government

Beginning in March 2004, Public Works and the Council for Excellence in Government partnered with the FrameWorks Institute to research Americans' attitudes toward the public sector. Rather than simply studying static public opinion about government, we wanted to understand "how" Americans think about government. Specifically, we wanted to learn about the dominant frames or stereotypes to which Americans default when they think about government and how those frames affect public choices. Ultimately, we wanted to know how to best reframe the concept of government in order to evoke a different way of thinking, one that advances collective understanding of and support for public sector solutions to society's challenges.

The FrameWorks Institute, relying upon its multi-disciplinary team of communications scholars and practitioners, undertook this investigation by employing a variety of research methodologies. Public opinion experts reviewed hundreds of polls on attitudes toward government to uncover common themes. Team members conducted focus groups to explore various approaches to talking about government, and undertook hundreds of individual and small group interviews to create cognitive maps about current perceptions of government. As potential positive directions were distilled, a large priming survey was conducted to test new approaches to communicating about the public sector.

This is not your typical communications investigation, but part of the extensive multi-method research undertaken by the FrameWorks Institute and their research partners for the How to Talk about Government project. The research was undertaken in an iterative and interactive fashion. It included:

  • Twenty "elicitations" or one-on-one open-ended interviews with ordinary people to determine the frames available to them as they think about government and the consequences of those frames for positive engagement with government. Interviews were conducted in California, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the summer of 2004.
  • A meta-analysis of existing public opinion research in the public domain, encompassing more than 100 surveys conducted primarily within the past 5 years, as analyzed by FrameWorks' research partner Public Knowledge.
  • A second round of one-on-one interviews to verify and deepen the findings from the first round of interviews. In these, the researchers introduced specific language, ideas, and perspectives in order to observe any potential positive impacts on subjects' framing of government within the course of the interviews. The second round of interviews was conducted in Illinois in December 2004.
  • Twelve focus groups with engaged citizens - Republicans, Democrats and Independents who are news attentive and active in their communities - in Philadelphia, Tampa, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Hampshire, Oregon and Wisconsin.
  • Development of a "simplifying model"- Analogies and metaphors are powerful ways to distill complex concepts into broadly understandable communications. In talking about government, finding such a "simplifying model" was an important task in order to offer more concrete images of what government is and does. Roughly 350 subjects from around the US were recruited, representing diversity in occupations, education level, ethnicity, age, gender, geography and political orientation. A variety of methods--from phone interviews to open-ended questionnaires and experimental designs--were employed to develop this "simplifying model."
  • A national public opinion survey designed to test the power of the communications alternatives identified in previous research. This priming survey reflects a methodology developed by the FrameWorks Institute in which different samples of adults were exposed to different frames and types of information, to determine each element's impact on public support for specific policies. Throughout this analysis, the experimental groups were compared to a control group that received no deliberate framing. The comparison provided insights into how a mix of communications elements will shift opinion. FrameWorks research partner, Public Knowledge, collaborated in developing and implementing the survey.