Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll on the 2016 presidential contest has received wide attention this week, with coverage by a range of media outlets beyond ABC and the Post. Those include The Economist, USA Today, Politico, Salon, CNN, Bloomberg News, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Hill, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and… yes, People magazine. At ABCNews.com, our piece has received more than 1,450 comments, 2,400 Facebook likes and 975 tweets.

We’re pleased to announce the addition of Chad P. Kiewiet de Jonge to our team of research analysts, as well as two promotions of existing staff.

Kiewiet de Jonge is an expert in elections, survey methodology and international public opinion, with experience designing, implementing and analyzing surveys in domestic and international settings. He received doctoral and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Notre Dame and joins us from the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City, where he served as an assistant professor of political science. Chad previously spent four years as a graduate research assistant at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Among our existing staff:

• Julie E. Phelan, Ph.D., has been promoted to the position of vice president. Phelan has been with our company since its inception, serving as lead analyst, chief statistician and methodologist on a wide range of complex projects.
• Gregory G. Holyk, Ph.D., has been promoted to the position of senior research analyst. He has taken a leading role in many projects, including our ongoing ABC News/Washington Post polls and our participation on behalf of ABC on the survey committee of the network news exit poll consortium.

Welcome to Chad, and congratulations to Julie and Greg!

Summing up four years of in-depth research for Blue Shield of California Foundation, Gary Langer gave the keynote address and participated in training workshops Friday and Saturday, June 19-20, at the Clinic Leadership Institute, a statewide training program sponsored by the Foundation and administered by the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco. Click here for the presentation, “Patient Engagement and Primary Care Redesign in California’s Safety Net Clinics.”

Our June ABC News/Washington Post survey received wide pickup beyond ABC and the Post, by news organizations including The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Bloomberg News (here, here and here), Time magazine, The Associated Press (picked up as far afield as Malaysia), The Guardian, Human Events, the Chicago Sun Times, the San Francisco Examiner and many others.

Survey results in the aggregate can conceal substantial variability among subgroups; it’s therefore wise for assessments of accuracy to include analysis of disaggregated as well as aggregated data. Daniel M. Merkle, executive director of elections at ABC News, presented just such an analysis at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, comparing group-level results of our final 2014 pre-election ABC News/Washington Post poll with results of the national exit poll on Election Day. (Exit poll results are weighted to the actual vote totals; pre-election polls, of course, are not.) See his findings here.

We’re pleased to have presented three papers and a poster at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Hollywood, Florida:

• “The Opportunity Survey: Understanding the Roots of Attitudes on Inequality,” produced by Langer Research Associates for The Opportunity Agenda, presents our findings on the underlying values and beliefs that inform perceptions of inequality in U.S. society and views on policies intended to address it. Our report includes regression modeling and cluster analysis identifying like-minded groups in terms of these attitudes.

• “2014: Right Turn on a Bumpy Road,” presents our analysis of ABC News/Washington Post polls on the 2014 midterm elections and a look ahead to 2016. The report summarizes relevant economic and political data, tracks partisanship since 1981 and the course of consumer sentiment since the Great Recession, correlates economic and political attitudes with House vote and presents results of our 2014 Discontent Index and our more recent PxP (preference x priority) scores on policy issues in the presidential contest ahead.

• “Afghanistan: After the Election” presents our analysis of post-election polling in Afghanistan produced by the Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research, D3 Systems and Langer Research Associates.

Additionally, Research Analyst Greg Holyk presented a poster evaluating 2016 vote preference questions in the 2014 exit poll.

Our poll for ESPN and ABC News on the New England Patriots “deflategate” controversy has received wide pickup. Beyond ESPN andABC it’s been covered by The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Boston Herald, the Hartford Courant, Sporting News, many TV and radio outlets and multifarious sports blogs.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll this week covers the 2016 election, current political standings and views on a nuclear deal with Iran. Beyond ABC and the Post, we’ve seen pickup by outlets including USA Today, Time magazine, the Kansas City Star, Politico, the National Journal, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Philadelphia Tribune and NJ.com, among others. Langer Research Associates directs news polling for ABC News. See our reports here.

Gary Langer spoke today at a workshop on research transparency in the social sciences organized by the American Political Science Association, the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry at Syracuse University and the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. Held in Washington, D.C., the session brought together representatives from a range of academic associations in the social sciences and academic publishers to discuss the movement for greater research transparency. Langer summarized his efforts on disclosure over the last 15-plus years at ABC News, the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

A new statewide survey released today by Blue Shield of California Foundation finds a shortfall in treatment for low-income Californians with behavioral health needs. Among those who’ve wanted to speak with a healthcare professional about their emotional health in the past year, only half have done so.

Lack of access and communication are barriers. Six in 10 say they didn’t know whom to talk to. Comparatively few rate their providers highly for asking about their emotional well-being. And while three-quarters say it’s important to have access to a counselor at their place of care, just about half say one actually is available.

The study finds a strong relationship between behavioral health services, successful patient-provider relationships and a personal connection between patients and their place of care, all key elements of patient engagement, satisfaction and loyalty.

Produced for the Foundation by Langer Research Associates, the report, “Exploring Low-Income Californians’ Needs and Preferences for Behavioral Health Care,” is the latest in a four-year series of studies examining the healthcare experiences of low-income Californians. See it here.