Topic Invitations from Intl J Mar Res
Introduction
The International Journal of Market Research seeks papers on two timely themes: researching voting intentions, and also market research in a recession
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Introduction
International Journal of Market Research invites submissions on the theme of ‘Researching voting intentions’. Submissions will be published as soon as they are accepted for publication.
Call for Papers
International Journal of Market Research
‘RESEARCHING VOTING INTENTIONS’
Early November saw the US presidential elections and sometime between now and the middle of 2010 there will be a General Election in the UK. For many decades survey research methodologies have played a key role in measuring the voting intentions of the public, their attitudes, and those of decision makers and opinion formers, to key political issues and policies. The findings from these polls and other politically orientated surveys have become an essential input to the democratic process, widely commissioned from market research companies by the media, political parties, academic institutions and other interest groups in order to check a nation’s pulse and fine-tune the focus within strategy, messages and coverage.
Methodology has evolved over time. Quota based ‘face-to-face’ interviews initially supplanted random probability sampling, at least in the UK many years ago. This was augmented, or replaced, by telephone polling in the 1980’s (in the UK), and in more recent years by online interviewing.
Exit polling has also become an established part of the overall process in many countries, sometimes leading to the research methodologies and the electoral process itself being subject to close scrutiny where the differences between the two results are beyond the realms of sampling error.
In some countries media coverage of political opinion polling, or polls themselves, are banned in the run-up to a general election.
There has been surprising little coverage in IJMR in recent years of methodological developments and issues in this field of research. Despite the dearth of submissions, past published papers have been recent award winners – Johnson and Harris (48, 3) won the David Winton Award in 2006 and Sparrow (48, 6) won the MRS Silver Medal in 2007. However, the last serious coverage of this field of research in IJMR was within the special Social Research issue in 2004 (46, 1) discussing the reliability of online polls.
Rather than devote a special issue to this topic, the Executive Editorial Board felt that on this occasion it would be more appropriate to publish individual papers as and when they are accepted for publishing. This will hopefully also provide continuous coverage in the run-up to the next UK general election and its aftermath.
IJMR is an international journal and we would therefore welcome submissions covering experiences around the world in order to provide as broad a perspective on this field as possible.
Submissions will be considered for all three main categories of content: formal papers, articles for the Forum section and Viewpoints.
A summary of Guidelines for Contributors to IJMR can be found at . This website also includes full details of how to submit a contribution at . Please ensure that you mark your submission ‘Researching voting intensions’.