Abstract:
Social survey research institutions (SWS and Pulse Asia) have been widely known and
accepted in the Philippine democratic scene. However, this raises the questions of exactly why
do public opinion polling institutes exist and how do they affect the people in general. Along
with the identification of answers to these questions, the main objective of this study was to
ascertain the role of these survey research institutes in shaping the political awareness of the
voting public. As such, the 2007 Senatorial elections was taken as a case study to identify or
describe this proposed relationship. Public opinion polling has been established in the Philippines for decades, and as nongovernmental
institutions, both social survey research institutes have been conducting regular
survey-based researches to monitor the socio-economic condition of the country and to be
consequently published to the public. Since these results are claimed to be representative of the
collective and aggregated voice of the people, this study sought to make sense of social surveys
in relation to the public. The data gathered for this study provided information on the basic awareness and perception of the public on social surveys and survey research institutes. Moreover, this study was also able to show how social surveys in general were a factor in shaping the over-all political awareness of the individual respondents. This was quantified through the correlation of the survey-type that influenced them more and their preference based
on the candidate criteria provided. Although descriptive in nature, this research highlighted the role of social survey research
institutes as one of the avenues by which the public can obtain the necessary information
regarding the socio-economic profile of the country for a more rational and informed citizenry.
