Public Opinion Surveys

Why conduct public opinion surveys?

Conducting public opinion surveys is an important part of an overall community assessment and can help your community determine its point-of-sale tobacco control strategy. Public opinion surveys can be used to:

• Measure initial support for tobacco control strategies.
• Determine policies that require education and outreach campaigns to build support (i.e., those with lower levels of public support).
• Assess community norms and assumptions to inform media campaigns and determine policy receptivity in the community ^[1]
• Help determine how to frame your messaging when educating the community and advocating for the policy.
• Evaluate effectiveness of education and outreach campaigns with follow-up data
• Inform policy priorities. In general, policies with greater support are more likely to pass.
• Provide data to advocate for policy change.
• Evaluate the impact of policies.

How to conduct public opinion surveys

You can craft a public opinion survey specific to point-of-sale issues or you may be able to incorporate measures into existing surveys. When developing a public opinion survey, consider requesting the following information:

• Demographics (e.g., sex, age, race/ethnicity)
• Smoking status
• Support for specific tobacco control policies, such as:
  • Prohibiting coupon redemption
  • Prohibiting flavored tobacco products
  • Prohibiting the sale of tobacco products in certain types of establishments (e.g., pharmacies)

Examples of public opinion survey results

• The following graph demonstrates data from the 2012 New York City Tobacco Behavior and Public Opinion Survey. In 2013, New York City pursued historic point-of-sale legislation that included some of these policies that had demonstrated high levels of public support—raising the minimum age to purchase cigarettes and a product display ban.

• Researchers found national broad-based support through a 2013 administration of the Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control, which demonstrated that over 70% of adults support raising the minimum legal sale age of tobacco products to 21, including the majority of smokers and individuals ages 18-21, who would be most impacted by the law.
• ANSR MN’s 2015 Flavored Tobacco Survey
• ANSR MN’s 2015 poll of Saint Paul residents on their support for a proposed ordinance restricting flavored tobacco products to adult-only tobacco shops.
• Southern Tier Tobacco Awareness Coalition’s 2017 Community Tobacco Assessment Survey 
• Florida’s Voter Opinion Polling (2015)
• Survey of California Voters About Policies in the Retail Environment (2011)
• Tobacco Retailer Licensing: Rural California Poll (2008)

Use of public opinion survey results

To learn more about how communities have used public opinion surveys, review the following resources:

• The Center for Public Health Systems Science’s Point-of-Sale Community Support Survey: Baseline Assessment for St. Louis County
• Public opinions on tax and retail-based tobacco control strategies (Farley et al., 2013)
• Understanding Community Norms Surrounding Tobacco Sales (McDaniel & Malone, 2014)