First Pollitician

The old Literary Digest straw poll, although it came to a disastrous end when it predicted that Alfred Mossman Landon would be elected President in 1936, demonstrated that public opinion polls have a commercial value. Result is that at least half-a-dozen organizations today are periodically polling the U. S. public on what it eats, what it thinks, whether it expects to come to a good end. First modern scientific pollitician was big-eared, sharp-nosed Dr. Henry Charles Link, director of the Psychological Corporation's Psychological Service Centre in Manhattan. Dr. Link, who thinks mankind needs more religion and mathematics, started using a "psychological barometer" in 1932, three years before the FORTUNE Survey and George Horace Gallup's Institute of Public Opinion. Last week, in Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Link told the American Association of Applied Psychologists he had developed a barometer so sensitive that it can measure public opinion shifts as small as 1%.

Dr. Link started his measurement of public taste and opinion as a service to sell to advertisers. He was the first to apply psychologists' findings about the mathematical laws of chance to polling. He analyzed standard tables of accuracy, found that with 5,000 interviews of a carefully selected, economically proportional cross-section, he could come within 1% of the result he would get by polling the entire population; with 20,000 interviews, within one half of 1%. To make his sample representative in a general poll of public opinion, Dr. Link questions 4,000 to 10,000 people (depending on the question) in 70 cities and towns throughout the U. S., in four economic groups (10% with incomes over $4,000, 30% $2,000 to $4,000, 40% $1,000 to $2,000 and 20% below $1,000). Because mailed ballots are unreliable, Dr. Link (like FORTUNE and Mr. Gallup) does all his work by interview. He sends paid, trained investigators (usually psychologists or psychology students) to people's homes.

Prime refinement claimed by Dr. Link is scientific phrasing of questions. He warned that careless or dishonest polliticians can easily rig a poll. Changing one or two words, he said, sometimes changes responses by 10% to 20%. Thus, 69% of a group who were asked "Are we headed for prosperity?" answered "Yes," but when the question was changed to "Are we headed for a reasonable prosperity?" the yeses increased to 81%.

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