We’re excited to welcome Margaret Clare Tyson as a new research analyst at Langer Research Associates.

Tyson combines professional and academic experience in creating and implementing research designs, designing questionnaires and conducting complex statistical analyses. She joins us from Educational Testing Service, where she analyzed data for item quality, bias, reliability and validity.

Tyson earned her M.A. from Columbia University’s Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences program, focusing on survey methodology, and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Drew University in Madison, N.J., with a BA in sociology. Welcome, Meg!

In what it calls “a deeper dive into consumer attitudes,” Wells Fargo Bank’s “Global Macro Strategy Report” makes extensive use of our ongoing Bloomberg® Consumer Comfort Index™. Gary Thayer, head of global macro strategy, characterizes our recent results and adds, “We believe the Bloomberg consumer comfort measure adds an important dimension to gauging consumer attitudes.” See his report here, and more on the CCI here.

We’re proud to share in a 2015 Ogilvy Award to ESPN and its research partners for “WHO’S IN?,” ESPN’s highly successful marketing campaign for this year’s College Football Playoffs.

The Advertising Research Foundation’s David Ogilvy Awards for Excellence in Advertising Research “honor the creative use of research in the advertising development process by research firms, advertising agencies and advertisers.” The award, announced this week, cites ESPN and its six partners in the project; in addition to Langer Research Associates they include Weiden and Kennedy, NowWhat, Global Strategy Group, SSRS and Point Logic.

Our role in ESPN’s multi-pronged campaign was to design, manage and analyze a series of national surveys tracking fans’ awareness of the new playoff system, their interest in hearing more about it and their levels of excitement about watching the games. Our statistical analysis identified the strongest predictors of fan excitement; as ESPN reported, “we discovered a positive correlation between knowledge and excitement, making education a key priority of the campaign.” Topline data found an 11-point increase in fans’ knowledge about the new system in the weeks leading up to the playoffs.

Our research identified a core audience of 24 million highly engaged fans. Ultimately each of the two playoff games drew just more than 28 million viewers, and the championship game drew more than 33 million – the top three most-viewed programs in cable television history.

Congratulations to ESPN and the rest of its research partners!

More than half of low-income Californians now rate the quality of their health care positively, and a new statewide survey shows improvement in a range of other key measures as well, including continuity of care, waiting times, availability of appointments, staff courtesy and the cleanliness and appearance of healthcare facilities.

The gains, detailed in a report released today by Blue Shield of California Foundation, indicate the impact of patient-focused improvements among healthcare facilities serving low-income Californians, as well as expanded coverage brought about by the federal Affordable Care Act. The survey finds a dramatic drop in the number of low-income Californians who lack health insurance, from 30 percent in 2013 to 15 percent after the ACA’s first enrollment period.

The statewide survey is the fourth in a series sponsored by the Foundation since 2011, examining low-income Californians’ experiences and satisfaction as healthcare patients, and evaluating primary care redesign through the prism of patient engagement. It was produced, managed and analyzed by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by SSRS of Media, Pa.

See the Foundation’s announcement here, with links to the full report.

We’ve seen coverage of the report by Kaiser Health News, Politico Pulse, California Healthline and Fierce Healthcare.

A newly released national survey in Afghanistan finds overwhelming support for the outcome of the country’s disputed 2014 presidential election, despite widespread suspicion of electoral fraud and broad recognition of the deep challenges facing the country.

Ratings of local living conditions and optimism for the future are up, the survey finds, but persistent problems remain. The availability of jobs and other economic opportunities, the supply of electricity and support for agriculture remain poorly rated. Complaints about corruption are widespread. And an increasing number of Afghans express willingness to tolerate the cultivation of opium poppy.

The survey finds continued substantial support for the presence of U.S. forces and near-unanimous preference for the current government rather than the Taliban. Despite the country’s travails, eight in 10 still call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 a good thing for Afghanistan.

Released today, the survey was produced by the Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research and D3 Systems, Inc., as the latest in their ongoing Afghan Futures survey project, with analysis by Langer Research Associates. See the analysis here and a summary of the survey methodology here.

See also our extensive January 2014 assessment of Afghanistan’s civil society sector, produced for Counterpart International’s Initiative to Promote Afghan Civil Society (I-PACS II) program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Based on a national survey of civil society organizations and more than four dozen qualitative interviews, the report evaluates progress and prospects for CSOs in the country.

Results from our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll received coverage across other media outlets, including CNN, Vanity Fair, USA Today, The Boston Herald, The National Journal, The Financial Post, The Washington Times, NBC News, MSNBC and The Hill.

The Opportunity Agenda today released “The Opportunity Survey: Understanding the Roots of Attitudes on Inequality,” an in-depth study produced by Langer Research Associates that delves into the foundations of Americans’ views on equality issues. The survey measures opinions relating to unfair treatment of groups in U.S. society, then examines the formative elements of these views, including core values, perceptions of society, group identities and life experiences. Through cluster analysis, the study identifies six group typologies based on their views on opportunity issues. See the report here.

In the interest of transparency, ABC News, through its public opinion polling provider Langer Research Associates, is making available 15 years of sample dispositions as collected for ABC News and ABC News/Washington Post polls since 1999.

Sample dispositions are used in calculating survey contact, cooperation and response rates, and as such may be of interest to some researchers. The document includes an explanatory comment and references to resources on the subject.

The file is available here.

We’re pleased and proud to have been named today as a charter member of the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Membership means that the methodological disclosure associated with the surveys we produce has been examined and certified by AAPOR as compliant with its Code of Professional Ethics and Practices. See details on AAPOR’s TI here, and a description of our commitment to research standards here.

We try not to focus our political polling for ABC News on the horse race; we’re more interested in covering why and how people come to their choices than in simply reciting the score of the game. That said, fascination with the horse race runs high, and inescapably it’s one metric used to assess poll performance. So here it is: Our final pre-election estimate in our 10/26 ABC News/Washington Post poll had the national House vote among likely voters at 44-50 percent, D-R, +6 for the Republicans. The latest actual vote count from the AP puts the outcome at 46-52 percent, D-R, +6 for the Republicans.

In addition, our analysis of the 2014 exit polls, reported on ABCNews.com, has been cited by other news organizations including Politico (in the vaunted Mike Allen’s Playbook), Forbes, Yahoo News, the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post. Separately, International Business Times quotes Gary Langer on data quality.