Danna Basson is a Survey Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, and was previously at the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, where she managed multiple large survey projects. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests are in public opinion and survey methodology, with a focus on response latency in survey questions about political attitudes.

Adam J. Berinsky is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. His research is primarily concerned with questions of representation and the communication of public sentiment to political elites, but he has also studied the continuing power of ethnic stereotypes, the effect of voting reforms, and public opinion and foreign policy. Berinsky has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, American Politics Research, Political Psychology, and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. He is the author of Silent Voices: Public opinion and political representation in America (Princeton University Press, 2004).

Frank Brettschneider is Professor of Communication Studies and Communication Theory at the University of Hohenheim. His research focuses on campaign communication, public opinion, media effects, and communication performance management. He is member of the advisory board of the international institute for media analysis ‘Media Tenor’ and director of the Centre for Communication Performance Management.

Yun-han Chu is distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and Professor of political science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as the President of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. He specializes in politics of Greater China, East Asian political economy and democratization. He is the Coordinator of Asian Barometer Survey, a regional network of survey on democracy, governance and development covering more than 16 Asian countries. He currently serves on the editorial board of International Studies Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of East Asian Studies and Journal of Democracy. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 11 books.

Bernhard Debatin is Associate Professor for Multimedia Policy at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and Director of Tutorial Studies in Journalism, Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He received his doctorate in philosophy at Technical University Berlin (Germany), 1994, and his M.A. in Mass Communication at Free University Berlin (Germany), 1988. He is author or editor of six books and over 50 scholarly articles on media ethics, public communication, online journalism, and metaphor theory. He served as chairman of the media ethics section of the German Association of Communication Studies (DGPuK) from 2001–2005.

Don A. Dillman is Regents Professor and the Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy at Washington State University. He has written extensively on data collection methods, authoring or editing more than 100 methodological publications including six books. His current research emphasizes understanding visual layout effects in Internet and mail surveys and measurement consequences for mixed-mode surveys.

Wolfgang Donsbach is a Professor of Communication at the Department of Communication at Dresden University of Technology, Germany, of which he also has been the founding director. He received his Ph.D. and his postdoctoral dissertation (Habilitation) at the University of Mainz. Prior to his current position he taught at the universities of Dortmund, Mainz and Berlin. In 1989/90 he was a fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies, Columbia University, New York, and in 1999 Lombard Visiting Professor at Harvard University. From 1995 to 1996 he was President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) and from 2004 to 2005 President of the International Communication Association (ICA). Donsbach is managing editor of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research (Oxford University Press) and general editor of the ten-volume International Encyclopedia of Communication.

Jennifer Dykema is an Associate Scientist with the University of Wisconsin Survey Center and the Center for Demography and Ecology-Madison. Her research interests focus on questionnaire design, interaction in the interview, and cognition and survey measurement. She has published articles on these topics in the American Sociological Review and the Journal of Official Statistics.

Robert M. Eisinger (B.A., Haverford College, 1987; Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1996) is the Chair of the Political Science Department at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. His research interests include public opinion, the history of presidential polling, and media bias. He is the author of The Evolution of Presidential Polling (2003: Cambridge University Press), as well as articles published in The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and The International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

William P. Eveland, Jr. (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997) is Associate Professor of Communication and Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. His research interests focus on the influence of political discussion and both traditional and non-traditional news media on informed participation in politics and perceptions of public opinion, with a particular interest in the mediating and/or moderating roles of motivation and information processing in these relationships.

Collin E. Fellows is a Graduate Student in Sociology at Portland State University and Program Manager of Students First Mentoring Program. His research interests focus on making higher education accessible to students who do not have a family history with higher education. He is also working on developing a practical measure of expertise and advancements in qualitative research methodology.

Kathleen A. Frankovic is Director of Surveys and Producer at CBS News, where she is responsible for the overall supervision of the CBS News opinion polls. Since 2002, she has also managed CBS News Election Night projections. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and speaks and writes extensively on the relationship between the news media and public opinion. She was President of WAPOR in 2003–2004.

Yang-chih Fu (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He is working on how to perceive social capital with a network perspective that focuses on daily contact, on which he has published articles in Social Networks and Field Methods. He has helped initiate the East Asian Social Survey (EASS) and served in both the Methodology and Standing Committees of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP).

Mirta Galešić is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and a M.S. in Survey Methodology from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, University of Maryland, USA. She is interested in cognitive aspects of survey response, communication of risks, and decision making.

Carroll J. Glynn is a Professor and Director of the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. She received her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Florida and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to her position at Ohio State, Dr. Glynn was a Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at Cornell University where she taught and conducted research for 14 years. Her research interests focus on the understanding of public opinion formation and process and the relationship of public opinion to social norms.

Murray Goot is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a former President of the Australasian Political Studies Association. He has written widely on Australian public opinion. His current research is focused on competing concepts of public opinion, a critique of deliberative polling, and a history of opinion polling in Australia.

Albert C. Gunther (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1987) is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the psychology of the mass media audience, with particular emphasis on perceptions of media influence on others (the presumed influence hypothesis) and biased evaluations of message content (the hostile media effect). His theoretical work has been applied in contexts ranging from science controversies like genetically modified foods to health issues like adolescent smoking adoption. Gunther's most recent research concerns the role of media in public health issues.

Michael Häder holds the chair for Empirical Research Methods at the Institute for Sociology in Dresden (Technical University) since 2001. He studied sociology at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. Thereafter Michael Häder was scientific co-worker at the University in Leipzig, at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and at the Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA) in Mannheim. His current working fields are: Delphi-Method and Survey Research.

Lutz M. Hagen is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies and Director of the Institute of Media and Communication at Dresden University, Germany. He received his Ph.D. and his postdoctoral dissertation at the University of Erlangen and Nuremberg. His main research interests are in economic and political communication, especially concerning structure and effects of the news, content analysis and empirical research methods.

Jochen Hansen is a Senior Research Staff Member at the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, Germany. He studied economics and social sciences, receiving his degree in 1966. He has lectured at German universities and has many years of experience in conceptualizing and [Page xiii]coordinating panel studies on market and social research issues. He is the author of numerous publications on survey research.

Sibylle Hardmeier (Dr. phil., University of Berne, Switzerland) is working as Political and Social Scientist in Berlin and Zurich. She studied at the University of Berne (history, political science, sociology), the George Washington University (Washington DC) and the Stanford University (CA) and graduated in history. After receiving her Ph.D. (1996) she worked as senior assistant and Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich, Department of Political Science; 2005–2006 she was research professor at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). Her research interest focus on opinion polling and public opinion, political behavior, election and referenda studies, as well as gender studies and democratic theory.

Uwe Hartung received his academic education at the University of Mainz, Germany, and the University of Maryland, College Park. Up to 2001 he was on the staff of the Institut fur Publizistik at Mainz. He has worked in the editorial office of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, first in affiliation with Mainz, then Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach, Germany, then with Technische Universität Dresden. He is also a freelancing advisor for social science methods to the Health Care Communication Lab of the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano.

Ottar Hellevik is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, where he has been Chairman of the Department and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is also director of research at the market research institute Synnovate MMI. Hellevik has been member of the board of WAPOR and is currently member of the editorial board of International Journal of Public Opinion Research. His main research interests are values and value change, voter behavior and political recruitment, social inequality, and survey research methodology.

Anne Hildreth is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, a State University of New York. Her research focuses on public consumption of public opinion and the citizen level environment of political communication. She has published work in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research and the American Journal of Political Science.

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her current research interests include elites, political culture, democratization and comparative politics. She is author of numerous publications on the structure of elites in developed democracies, political representation and the role of elites in democratic transitions.

Allyson Holbrook (B.A., Dickinson College; M.A., Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Psychology at the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Holbrook teaches courses primarily in methodology and statistics and conducts research in two areas: (1) survey methodology, particularly the role that social and psychological processes play in the task of answering survey questions, and (2) attitudes and persuasion, and the role attitude strength plays in moderating the impact of attitudes on thoughts and behaviors. She came to UIC in 2002 after receiving her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

Wolfgang Jagodzinski is President of the General Social Science Infrastructure GESIS in Germany and Professor at the University of Cologne. He is involved in several international [Page xiv]survey programs such as the European Values Survey and the International Social Survey Program. His publications focus on methodological issues, political sociology, and cultural change.

Hans Mathias Kepplinger is Professor of Communications at University of Mainz (since 1982). He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science (1970) and his postdoctoral lecturing qualification in communications (1977). He was a Heisenberg scholarship holder of the German Science Foundation (1978–1980) and served as director of the Institut fur Publizistik and dean of the social science. He was a research fellow at UC Berkeley and guest lecturer at University of Tunis and Southern Illinois University. His most recent book (2005), Abschied vom rationalen Wähler (Farewell to the rational voter), looks at the effects of TV upon the images of politicians and their impact upon voting behavior. It is based upon 11 panel surveys (1998–2002) combined with content analysis of TV news.

Gasper Koren is Ph.D. student of Statistics at University of Ljubljana. His current research is focused on Web survey applications in the field of ego-centered social networks.

Jon A. Krosnick (B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Psychology at Stanford University. Author of four books and more than 120 articles and chapters, Dr. Krosnick conducts research in three primary areas: (1) attitude formation, change, and effects, (2) the psychology of political behavior, and (3) the optimal design of questionnaires used for laboratory experiments and surveys, and survey research methodology more generally. He has taught courses on survey methodology around the world, has provided expert testimony in court, and has served as an on-air election-night television commentator and exit poll data analyst.

Michael Kunczik is Professor of Communication in the Institut fur Publizistik at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany. He has researched mass media effects (violence and the mass media), theories of mass communication, international communication (images of nations and international public relations), mass media and social change as well as media economics and ethics in journalism. Recent publications include Images of Nations and International Public Relations (1997, second edition), Ethics in Journalism (1999), and the German book Public Relations (2002, fourth edition) which appeared also in a Romanian (2004) and a Croatian translation (2005).

Marta Lagos is founding Director of the Latinobarómetro, a yearly regional opinion barometer survey in 18 Latin American countries. Formerly the head of a Chilean think tank (CERC) that conducted opinion polls during Pinochet's regime, Lagos is founding director of her own polling company MORI (Chile), which has been associated with MORI UK since 1994. She is member of the World Values Survey team and the steering committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). Lagos is a consultant to international organizations like UNDP, World Bank, and the ILO. She is also editor of the World Opinion Section of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Kenneth C. Land is the John Franklin Crowell Professor of Sociology and Demography at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina, USA). His research interests are in mathematical sociology/demography, statistical methods, demography, social indicators/quality-of-life measurement, and criminology. He is the co-author or co-editor of five books and author or co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang are Professors emeriti of Communication, Sociology, and Political Science at the University of Washington. Their collaboration began in 1951 with a prize-winning joint paper on the ‘unique perspective of television’ of the rousing welcome given General MacArthur. Other publications include: Collective Dynamics (1961) about crowds, masses, publics, and social movements; Politics and Television (1968, 1984, and 2002); The Battle for Public Opinion (1983) about the interplay among political actors, the media, and the public during Watergate; and Etched in Memory: The Building and Survival of Artistic Reputation (1990 and 2001), based on near 300 men and women artists associated with the ‘etching revival.’ They received special awards for their lifetime achievement from American Association for Public Opinion Research and from the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association.

Paul J. Lavrakas, Ph.D., a research psychologist, served as Vice President and Senior Research Methodologist for The Nielsen Company since 2000–2007. He was a Professor of Journalism & Communication Studies at Northwestern University (1978–1996) and at Ohio State University (1996–2000). During his academic career he was the founding Faculty Director of the Northwestern University Survey Lab (1982–1996) and the OSU Center for Survey Research (1996–2000). Among his publications, Dr. Lavrakas has written a widely read book on telephone survey methodology. He was a co-recipient of the 2003 AAPOR Innovators Award for his work on the standardization of survey response rate calculations.

Katja Lozar Manfreda, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Statistics and Social Informatics at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include survey methodology, new technologies in social science data collection and web surveys. She is involved in WebSM site developments from its beginnings in 1998. She is also a member of the ESRA (European Survey Research Association) committee and the secretary of RC-33 (Research Committee on Logic and Methodology) of the International Sociological Association.

Robert Mattes is Professor of Political Studies and Director of the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town. He is also a co-founder and co-Director of the Afrobarometer, a regular survey of public opinion in 18 African countries. His research has focused on the development of democratic attitudes and practices in Africa. He is the co-author (with Michael Bratton and E. Gyimah-Boadi) of Public Opinion, Democracy and Markets In Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and has authored or co-authored articles in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, World Development, and Journal of Democracy.

Debra Merskin, Associate Professor, teaches in and is Head of the Communication Studies sequence in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her research on race, gender, and media appears in journals such as The Howard Journal of Communication, Sex Roles, Feminist Media Studies, Peace Review, and Mass Communication & Society. She has contributed chapters to Bring ‘em on: Media and politics in the Iraq war, Sex in consumer culture: The erotic content of media and marketing, The girl wide web: Girls, the Internet, and the negotiation of identity.

David L. Morgan is a University Professor at Portland State University where he also holds an adjunct appointment in Sociology. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on focus group research. In addition to his work on focus groups, Dr. Morgan's current interests center on issues in research design, with an emphasis on topics related to combining qualitative and quantitative methods.

Meinhard Moschner (Ph.D., University of Cologne, 1982) is staff member of the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research in the German Social Science Infrastructure Services (GESIS-ZA). His activity focuses on the processing and documentation of international data collections (Eurobarometer) and the related archive services.

Patricia Moy (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is the Christy Cressey Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, where she is adjunct faculty in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on public opinion and political communication; she studies how communication shapes public opinion, citizens’ trust in government, and civic and political engagement. Moy's work has appeared in leading refereed journals such as Journal of Communication and Political Communication, and a book, With Malice Toward All? (co-authored with Michael Pfau). She currently serves as Associate Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly and sits on the Executive Council of the World Association for Public Opinion Research.

Peter Neijens is Chair of Persuasive Communication in The Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR (University of Amsterdam). His research interests include public opinion, referendums, public information campaigns, and media & advertising. His publications include over 100 peer-reviewed publications in national and international journals and books. Peter Neijens served as Scientific Director of The Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR from 1998 to 2005. His research has received several awards, such as the Worcester Prize for the best article in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research (1997) and the Top Paper Award of the International Communication Association (in 2000 and 2006).

Anne Niedermann (M.A., Ph.D., Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz, 1991) is research director for legal evidence at the Allensbach Institute (Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach) in Germany. In this position she is responsible for giving expert opinions based on surveys in the areas of competition and trademark law. She also serves as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Constance and is the chairperson of the complaints council of the Rat der Deutschen Markt- und Sozialforschung e.V., a joint disciplinary body of the German associations of market, opinion and social research. Her areas of research include the theory of public opinion, survey research as legal evidence, survey research methodology, quality criteria in survey research, brands, market research and media law.

Anthony Oberschall is emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He studied with Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia in 1958–1962. He has written extensively on the history of social research. In the past decade he has studied and written on conflict and peace making in deeply divided societies, such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Palestine.

Colm O'Muircheartaigh is Professor in the Irving B Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and Senior Fellow in the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), both at the University of Chicago. His research interests are in sample design, question form and wording, modeling response and nonresponse errors, and issues of inference in surveys and social experiments.

Nicholas L. Parsons is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Washington State University. His scholarly interests include quantitative methods, criminology, and the sociology of culture. He is currently conducting research on the epidemiology of methamphetamine use in the United States and media coverage of the ‘Meth Epidemic.’ He is also engaged in research on collective memory in sport, and the effectiveness of adult drug courts.

Thomas E. Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His book's include The Vanishing Voter (2003), which looks at the causes and consequences of declining electoral participation; Out of Order (1993), which received the American Political Science Association's inaugural Graber Award for best book in political communication of the last decade; and The Unseeing Eye (1976), which was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half-century.

Richard M. Perloff is Professor and Director of the School of Communication at Cleveland State University. He has published widely on the third-person effect and is the author of The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 21st century (2nd ed.) and Political Communication: Politics, Press, and Public in America. Perloff's scholarship has focused on the confluence of communication and the psychology of perceptions of media effects. He recently edited a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on communication and health care disparities.

Thomas Petersen is member of the Institute fur Demoskopie Allensbach's research staff since 1993. He was lecturer at the University of Constance (1995/96), the University of Dresden (2002/2003) and the University of Mainz (since 2003). He is national representative of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) for Germany since 1999, since 2007 Vice President and President-Elect of WAPOR, since 2004 vice chair of the Visual Communication Division of the German Society for Communication Research (DGPuK). His research focuses survey research methodology, field experiments, international values studies, political survey research, visual communication and panel analyses on political topics and in market research.

Vincent Price is the Steven H. Chaffee Professor of Communication and Political Science at the Annenberg School for Communication and Associate Provost, University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and editor of Public Opinion Quarterly. Price has published extensively on mass communication and public opinion, social influence processes, and political communication. His most recent research, funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Pew Charitable Trusts, focuses on the role of political conversation, particularly Web-based discussion, in shaping public opinion.

Kenneth A. Rasinski, Ph.D., is Principal Research Scientist at the National Opinion Research Center and lecturer at the University of Chicago. He conducts research on psychological aspects of survey responding, and on public opinion in areas related to mental health, substance abuse and criminal justice, and on the experiences of public housing residents. His work has appeared in such journals as Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Social Science Quarterly, and Crime and Delinquency.

John P. Robinson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he directs the Americans’ Use of Time Project and the Internet Scholars Program. His areas of research specialization include social science methodology, attitude and behavior measurement, social change, and the impact of information communication and other home technology. He directed the pioneering trend studies of how Americans spend time and the impact of the Internet (with main support from the National Science Foundation), as well as Americans’ participation in the arts (SPPA) for the National Endowment for the Arts. Dr. Robinson was an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation Fellow at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, [Page xviii]a Fulbright scholar at Moscow State University and Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Research Consultant at BBC News and acted as Research Coordinator for the US Surgeon General's Committee on Television and Society.

Patrick Roessler studied communication, political science and law, Ph.D. in communication (1987, University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim). 1989–1997 Research Assistant at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, 1997–2000 Assistant Professor at the University of Munich, Department of Communication. 2000 to 2003 Full Professor of Media Sociology and Media Psychology, since 2004 Full Professor of Communication Science/Empirical Research at the University of Erfurt. Board Member of the German Communication Association (DGPuK), representative of the International Communication Association (ICA) in Germany. Editor of the book series Internet Research and medien + gesundheit, co-editor of the book series Reihe Rezeptionsforschung (all R. Fischer Verlag, Munich). Main fields of scholarly interest: media effects research, new media developments and online communication, audience research, health communication.

Nora Cate Schaeffer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches survey research methods and conducts research on instrument design and interaction in the survey interview. She also serves as Faculty Director of the University of Wisconsin Survey Center. She recently co-edited (with Douglas W. Maynard, Johannes van der Zouwen, and Hanneke Houtkoop) Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview. She is a member of the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council and the Public Opinion Quarterly Advisory Committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

Dietram A. Scheufele is a Professor of Life Sciences Communication and Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is past President of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and has served as journal review editor for the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Scheufele has published extensively in the areas of political communication, public opinion and science communication. His most recent work, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on public opinion formation about emerging technologies.

Winfried Schulz is emeritus Professor of Mass Communication and Political Science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany). His publications and his continuing research focus on political communication, mass media audiences and effects, news analysis, media policy and media performance.

Norbert Schwarz is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research, and Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business. His research interests focus on human judgment and cognition, including the interplay of feeling and thinking, the socially situated nature of cognition, and the implications of basic cognitive and communicative processes for public opinion, consumer behavior and social science research.

Eva Johanna Schweitzer is a doctoral candidate in the Institut fur Publizistik at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany. She has studied mass communication, comparative literature, and psychology. Her research interests concern political communication and online communication.

Tom W. Smith is an internationally recognized expert in survey research specializing in the study of societal change and survey methodology. Since 1980 he has been co-principal investigator of the National Data Program for the Social Sciences and director of its General Social Survey (GSS) at the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago. Smith was co-founder and Secretary General of the International Social Survey Program (1997–2003).

Fred Steeper is a Consultant at Market Strategies, Inc., Livonia, Michigan and one of its founders in 1989. He was a Senior Vice President of Market Opinion Research, Detroit, where he was employed, 1972–1989. He studied at the Institute for Social Research and the University of Michigan. He has designed polling, focus group and ad testing research in more than 100 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns since 1972. He served various research roles in nine Presidential elections including a principle role in three. His international experience includes campaign and issue research in Canada, the Philippines, and Moscow.

Jonathan David Tankel is Associate Professor of Communication at Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne. He earned his Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught previously at the University of Maine and Ithaca (NY) College. His work has appeared in Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journal of Communication, Free Speech Yearbook, and Journal of Radio Studies, as well as various book chapters. He served as Chair of the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association (2002–2004).

Humphrey Taylor is the Chairman of the Harris Poll, a service of Harris Interactive. He was educated in Britain and has lived in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and, for the last 30 years, the United States. He has had responsibility for more than 8,000 surveys in more than 80 countries. In Britain he conducted proprietary polling for the Conservative Party and two Prime Ministers. He has published more than 1,000 columns, papers and book chapters. He has written op-ed articles for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and (London) The Times, and has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Roger Tourangeau is a Research Professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the Director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University. Prior to coming to Institute for Social Research, he has worked for the National Opinion Research Center and the Gallup Organization. His book, with Lance Rips and Kenneth Rasinski, The Psychology of Survey Response, won the 2006 Book Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research. During 2006, he served as the Chairman of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association.

Michael W. Traugott is Professor of Communication Studies and Political Science and Research Professor in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on public opinion, campaigns and elections, and survey methods. He is a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the current president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research.

Yariv Tsfati (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2002) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Israel. His research focuses on audience trust in news media institutions as a factor influencing media exposure and as a moderator in media effects. His work also considers audience perceptions of media influence as a source of behavioral effects in a variety of areas, ranging from residential mobility to parental mediation of television content.

Vasja Vehovar, Ph.D. is a full Professor of Statistics at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He teaches courses on Sampling, Survey methodology and Information Society. From 1996 he is the principal investigator of the national project Research on Internet in Slovenia (RIS). He is also responsible for the developments of WebSM portal devoted to web survey methodology and was the coordinator of the corresponding EU framework project. His research interests span from survey methodology to information society issues.

Penny S. Visser (B.S., Grand Valley State University, M.A., Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses primarily on the structure and function of attitudes, including the dynamics of attitude formation and change, the impact of attitudes on thought and behavior, the antecedents and consequences of attitude strength, and issues associated with attitude measurement and research methodology. Crosscutting Dr. Visser's specific interests in attitudes and persuasion is a more general interest in political psychology, and several strands of her research have been carried out within the political context.

David H. Weaver is the Roy W. Howard Professor in Journalism and Mass Communication Research at Indiana University's School of Journalism where he has been on the faculty since receiving his Ph.D. in mass communication research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974. He has written extensively on media agenda setting, voter learning, and the characteristics and opinions of US journalists. His recent books include The American Journalist in the 21st Century, Mass Communication Research and Theory, The Global Journalist, and Communication and Democracy.

Herbert F. Weisberg (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University, where he chairs the Department and teaches in their Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Survey Research. He is a specialist in American political behavior, and has written and edited several books on US voting behavior. He is the author of The Total Survey Error Approach (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and An Introduction to Survey Research, Polling, and Data Analysis (Sage, 1996). He has served as President of the Midwest Political Science Association and as editor of the American Journal of Political Science.

Hans L. Zetterberg has taught sociology at Columbia University in The City of New York and at Ohio State University where he was Chairman of the Sociology Department. He has also been a publisher of scholarly books (Bedminster Press), the chief executive of a big foundation in his native Sweden (The Tri-Centennial Fund of the Bank of Sweden), a longtime pollster and market researcher (Sifo AB), and the editor-in-chief of a large Stockholm newspaper (Svenska Dagbladet). He is a past President of The World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR). He lives retired in Bromma, Sweden.