Must a Researcher Tell the Truth?

This paper is the Presidential Address which was delivered before the Thirteenth Annual Conference on Public Opinion Research in Chicago, Illinois, on May 10, 1958. The original, written and spoken with frequent resort to the first person pleural, loses something of its earnest tone when translated into a more conventional style for publication but it still calls for constructive criticism of current opinion research and effect the preparation to meet the increasingly exacting standards of the future. Frederick F. Stephan was President of the American Association for Public Opinion Research for the 1957-1959 term. He is Professor of Social Statistics at Princeton University. The central principle of the Conference is to take a broad look at what is being done in opinion research and to think more deeply about its meaning for clients, the public at large, and researchers themselves. In furtherance of this purpose the author chose as the title of the address on which this paper is based, a simple but serious question.