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The Institute for Public Opinion Research (IPOR) is the only center of its kind at Florida International University. It is a research arm of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. IPOR was founded in 1983 to provide decision makers with reliable and timely information on how a scientifically-selected sample of the public stands on important issues, and to enhance the dialogue on major issues among decision makers, the media, and the people of Florida. IPOR provides professional services in all aspects of survey research including study and sample design, questionnaire development, interviewing, data entry, data analysis (statistical and GIS), evaluation analysis, and report writing. IPOR is a member of the National Network of State Polls.
IPOR has conducted over 100 surveys, interviewing over 90,000 respondents. These projects include thirteen years of the FIU/Florida Poll, one of the most comprehensive public opinion surveys conducted in the country. The FIU/Florida Polls ask Floridians how they feel about the important issues facing them -- crime and drugs, education, transportation, health, taxes, politics, etc., and tracks these questions year after year to determine whether and how views are changing.
IPOR studies include five needs assessment surveys of the elderly in Florida or Dade County. Two of these surveys, one of Dade County elderly and the other of Florida's elderly population, are the most comprehensive surveys of their kind ever conducted, with the data providing critical information for planning the care of these groups into the next century. Other health-related research conducted by IPOR include three cancer awareness and prevention/behavior surveys.
Major IPOR surveys that are helping inform critical policy and development decisions include: a survey over 5,000 Dade County residents on the issues of service delivery and incorporation which has provided information critical to incorporation efforts of areas of unincorporated Dade County; two statewide surveys central to planning for the Florida transportation system on Floridians attitudes and behaviors regarding the state transportation system; two surveys on the effects of Hurricane Andrew that are being used to help disaster planning both locally and nationally; and two surveys of the residents of south Florida of their attitudes regarding police protection and crime that are helping guide the public safety planning in the region.
Other surveys include a study to measure awareness, attitudes, and behavior regarding recycling; studies of drug abuse in the workplace, the school age population, and in the general population in Dade County; several studies measuring public attitudes on international issues including the war with Iraq, and U.S. policy toward the government in Cuba; and studies on parks and recreation, homelessness, taxation and spending, and labor issues.
IPOR is constantly working with new technology and data sources to develop and test new sampling and interviewing methodologies. Using geographic information systems (GIS) technology, IPOR has worked with Dade County planners to provide a sampling strategy for a field study of Dade County elderly living in areas most affected by Hurricane Andrew, and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research to collect, manage, and analyze data on the effects of Hurricane Andrew on the population of South Dade. All IPOR surveys use GIS for sample design and many incorporate GIS analysis in reporting survey results.
IPOR conducts its telephone polls from its phone research laboratory at the Biscayne Bay Campus of FIU. All IPOR project personnel are well-paid professionals who are specially trained for each project and who are monitored for adherence to IPOR's procedures and guidelines.
All surveys are done in English and Spanish with bilingual interviewers. IPOR also has considerable experience with survey interviews done in Haitian Creole. Questionnaires are carefully translated and back-translated and then extensively pretested under field conditions.
IPOR also has done many studies involving qualitative methods such as in-depth face-to-face interviewing and focus groups. It is preferable to incorporate such methods even in telephone and other quantitative surveys in the questionnaire design and pretest phase.
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