Louisiana Survey
The Louisiana Survey is sponsored by the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs in Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. The survey has been conducted each year since 2003 and twice in 2006, establishing rich longitudinal measures of public opinion in Louisiana. The mission of the Louisiana Survey is to establish benchmarks as well as to capture change in residents’ assessments of state government services. The survey is further dedicated to tracking public opinion on the contemporary policy issues that face the state. Each iteration of the Louisiana Survey contains core items designed to serve as barometers of public sentiment, including assessments of whether the state is heading in the right direction or wrong direction, perceptions about the most important problems facing the state, as well as evaluations of public revenue sources and spending priorities.
Public Policy Research Lab
The Public Policy Research Lab is a joint effort of the Manship School of Mass Communication’s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at LSU. We provide a variety of services including survey research, ‘big data’ analytics, social media tracking, and focus group interviews.
The Lab is primarily known for its telephone survey work. PPRL has 54 computer-assisted telephone interview call stations and a corps of highly-trained, well-supervised professional callers. It is one of the largest phone survey data collection facilities in the Southeastern Conference.
The Lab is dedicated to meeting the unique goals and objectives for each project by working closely with those seeking data, research expertise, or analysis. We combine professional capability, the latest data technologies, and the variety of intellectual assets available at LSU to serve our clients’ research needs.
Michael Henderson, Lead researcher, analyst and writer
Manship School Associate Professor and Reilly Center Research Affiliate | mbhende1@lsu.edu
Mike Henderson received his Ph.D. in government and social policy from Harvard University.
His interests include public opinion and elections. Specifically, his research focuses
on how information shapes what citizens learn about public affairs and how they use
this knowledge in making decisions. He has been involved in the design of several
polls, including the 2007-2008 Associated Press Yahoo New Election Panel Study, which
tracked the opinions of voters over the course of the 2008 presidential campaign,
and the annual Education Next Poll, administered under the auspices of Harvard University’s
Program on Education Policy and Governance to track Americans’ opinions of their schools
and education reform. He has published research in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political
Behavior, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Elections,
Public Opinion, and Parties. His work has been covered by The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic.