Public Hearings and Public Preferences: The Case of the White House Conference on Families

To provide input into Arizona's participation in the White HouseConference on Families, the Arizona Governor's Council on Children,Youth, and Families commissioned a random statewide survey toassess the relative priority given to 41 selected family-relatedneeds and preferences for institutional responses to those needs.A similar survey was administered to participants at each ofsix regional public hearings held throughout the state priorto the 1980 White House Conference on Families. A comparisonof the two surveys provides an opportunity to test the representativenessof public hearings participants with respect to the populationfrom which they were drawn. Fundamental differences in the prioritiesof these two samples cast considerable doubt on the assumptionthat public hearings are an effective means of gauging publicsentiment.