How strongly does the American public support the Vision for Space Exploration? It depends on who you ask, and how. Last week the Coalition for Space Exploration released the results of a Gallup survey that suggested strong support for the public. When asked if they supported a “stepping-stone approach” to space exploration that included the key milestones of the VSE (although not using the Vision name), 50.5% said they supported it and 26% said they strongly supported it; 20.4% said they either opposed or strongly opposed it. The coalition noted in its press release that the 76.5% support figure is up from the 68% in a similar poll last year.
A different result, though, came from a USA Today/CNN poll also performed by Gallup. According to a USA Today article about the poll results, “When respondents were asked how they felt about the United States setting aside money to land humans on Mars, 58% opposed the idea and 40% approved it.”
Why the difference? It’s very easy to shape poll results with some simple, subtle wordsmithing of the questions themselves. USA Today/CNN/Gallup didn’t publish the details about their polls, but the Coalition for Space Exploration did put online the detailed results, including the questions from the survey instrument used for the poll. The question in particular about support for the VSE reads as follows:
In January 2004, a new plan or goal for space exploration was announced. The plan includes a stepping-stone approach to return the space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station, build a replacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon, and then on to Mars and beyond. If NASA’s new budget did not exceed one percent of the federal budget, to what extent would you support or oppose this new plan for space exploration?
Compare that to at least what appeared in the USA Today article, which talked about “setting aside money to land humans on Mars”, a venture that sounds more vague, and potentially more expensive, than what was described in the coalition’s poll. That may well explain the diverging results, and where the sensitivities in public support for the VSE lie.
This seems pretty much in line with the pattern in poll results since 1960. When respondents are asked “Would you like to see the US do X/Y/Z in space,” most say yes. When they are asked to rank spending priorities for categories of government activity, space is way down the list.
That split has driven 30 years of moaning by space enthusiasts: “We the People want space, but have been thwarted by [Johnson/Nixon/social programs/tree-huggers/stingy Congress/dumb NASA bureaucy… etc etc] Apparently it would be too painful to accept that most of our fellow citizens do not, in fact, want space as urgently as we do.
It’s useful and productive to work to get the most bang for the bucks that Congress *does* provide. Or to recruit as much private investment as possible so that Congress isn’t the paymaster. Or, above all, to focus on CATS rather than flags & footprints so that wherever the money comes from, it buys more. But those are so *boring* compared to bloviating about leadership, vision, and how the real world just keeps on betraying the Timeless Primordial Outward Urge.
Ack i combined thoughts when replying another thing. Oh well:
I’d love to see a poll that asks “In terms of percentage of total federal budget, how much do you think NASA’s budget is and how much do you think it should be?”
This would give Congress numbers to know just how much they could increase it. As i stated before, local unscientific polls, that i conduct myself on lunch breaks, have that most people have no idea comparitivly how much NASA budget is.
As even these are leading questions.
The main conclusion should not be that polling is a subtle science that requires careful question phrasing (although that is somewhat true). No, the real message is that on complicated or technical issues, the public has never been informed, rational, or consistent. You can’t expect most people to be policy wonks on the economy and foreign relations and national defense and constitutional law and space policy and ten other smaller issues. The best that elected leaders can do is to serve with wisdom and knowledge, and not to zealously commit to “the will of the people”. That phrase is a favorite of crooks and scoundrels in Washington.
In the context of space policy: The public has always liked and never understood the space shuttle. Most people once accepted the lie that the shuttle is “routine and economical”; then they forgot that anyone ever said it, without recognizing the lie. It’s the same with the lie that the shuttle is an important science instrument. Most people either believe it, or don’t know that NASA claims it. Most people also know nothing about, or completely misunderstand, the safety issues that are right now killing human spaceflight at NASA by degrees. Ultimately, I don’t blame most people for not being space experts. I blame NASA and Washington for exploiting public naivete.
Meanwhile, as the shuttle sits idly on the launch pad, we see the forces of nature, engineering, and bureaucracy trump the forces of democracy. It’s the same with ever-popular missile defense. Rockets don’t fly by the will of the people.
Mr. Brown: you are correct that it would be interesting to find out what the public thinks NASA’s budget is. So interesting that it has been done in the past, including a poll by Zogby International for the Houston Chronicle two years ago. As you might imagine, most people thought NASA received a considerably larger share of the federal budget than it actually does. I wrote an article examining the poll results shortly after its release:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/41/1
The full results are also available from the links in the article.
Prof. Kuperberg: while the American public may indeed not be “informed, rational, or consistent” on space policy, that alone cannot explain the widely-differing results from the two polls. Given that both polls were performed by the same company at the same time using the same sample size, when you see a difference as great as this in the results, it is logical to assume that the wording of the survey instrument may have played a significant role in the disparate results.
Jeff,
Your comment misses the point. Since polls follow a scientific protocol, you can expect identical polls to yield the same results. So of course disparate results have to be due to question phrasing.
But what does it mean if you get a completely answer if you just rephrase a question? It means that the poll respondents aren’t prepared to give consistent answers. If you ask people a more personal question that they understand pretty well, like “Did you pay too much for your car?”, then the question phrasing won’t matter as much.
The lesson is that NASA shouldn’t take polls to make decisions. It should instead consider how it will be judged in hindsight.
“Since polls follow a scientific protocol,”
That is quite an assumption.
Cecil,
Obviously I don’t like the political influence of opinion polls. I particularly wonder why Gallup is an outlier among Bush approval rating polls. That said, these polls are valid experiments to see how particular samples of people answer particular questions. What makes it science is that Gallup adequately documents its protocol. That’s why (as the approval rating chart shows), different polling groups roughly agree when they ask exactly the same question. That is exactly the repeatability of valid science.
But valid science is not always useful science. If you mistrust polls because people misread the results, then I agree with you.
If you ask people about how much money is spent on a variety of programs, the numbers will probably add up to more than the federal budget. Especially overestimated will be small programs with high visibility like NASA, the State Department and the EPA. A pro-space person can use this to justify increased budgets. 1% for example would be $23 billion per year instead of $16-17 billion now.