I first became familiar with the work of Tom Smith when I was working on my AAPOR paper on multilingual, multinational and multicultural surveys. He is well spoken and an excellent writer. Here is an excellent commentary of his about the future of survey methodology. It really speaks to some of the motivation behind my enrollment in the MLC program. It is his final ‘Letter from the President” of his tenure as WAPOR (World Association of Public Opinion Research) president.

“Dear WAPOR Members,

Let me raise two inter-related questions:

Is public opinion research about to undergo a paradigm shift?

Should it or shouldn’t it?”

The full text can be found here: http://wapor.unl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/4q2011.pdf