Gary Langer has appeared twice recently on Public Radio International’s “To the Point” with Warren Olney, today on politics and the economy and last week on strategy in the presidential campaign. Separately, Esquire magazine and Yahoo! News today released additional resultsof the national political survey produced for them by Langer Research Associates; and our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll on views of the Obama and Romney campaigns was picked up this week by Politico and the Huffington Post, among others.

DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar, the nation’s leading association of civil defense lawyers, today released a random-sample national public opinion poll produced by Langer Research Associates on attitudes toward the U.S. system of civil jurisprudence. The results include self-assessments of potentially biased views of litigants, measures of public confidence in the civil law system and attitudes about class-action lawsuits, including personal experience with such cases. The survey finds broad preference for lawsuits to be tried by jury, buttressed by overwhelming acceptance among Americans of jury duty as a civic obligation. See the news release and full report here. The survey’s been reported by Legal Times.

Check here for the latest from our national political poll for Esquire and Yahoo! News. (Details below.) Great graphics!

Esquire magazine and Yahoo! News today released the first installment of their new national survey, produced by Langer Research Associates, taking a fresh look at political and social attitudes related to the 2012 election. Additional elements of the poll will be released in the weeks ahead. Beyond Esquire and Yahoo!, see the pickup in New York magazine, the Huffington Post, Politico, The Hill, the Christian Science Monitor, the Salt Lake Tribune, TPM and as far afield as Zee News in India.

Blue Shield of California Foundation has released “Empowerment and Engagement Among Low-Income Californians: Enhancing Patient-Centered Care,” a detailed report by Langer Research Associates on attitudes toward health care delivery among poor and near-poor residents of the state. Extending findings reported earlier this summer on patient connectedness and continuity, the new study explores the central role of information and communication in achieving the goals of patient-centered care, presenting a unique, data-driven model of patient engagement, with implications for policy and practice.

Based on a statewide, random-sample survey of 1,024 low-income Californians age 19 to 64, the survey finds that well-informed patients are much more likely than others to be confident about taking an active role in their care decisions, to feel comfortable asking questions of their care providers and to report that they understand their providers’ explanations. These elements – information, confidence, comfort asking questions and comprehension – are informed by the level of connectedness and continuity patients have with their care facility, and in turn predict patients’ engagement in healthcare decisions.

The report extends research initiated by BSCF in summer 2011 with its publication of “On the Cusp of Change: The Healthcare Preferences of Low-Income Californians,” and continued with this year’s reports. All are available via the Foundation’s website.

Coverage of the report includes pieces in CA Healthline and Modern Healthcare, and we presented the findings Oct. 12 at the annual meeting of the California Primary Care Association in Burlingame, Ca.

We’ve inaugurated our MoE Machine, an online margin-of-error calculator designed by Langer Research Associates to assist data producers and empower data consumers in computing margins of sampling error in survey results. The program reports the MoE for any sample size, as well as the differences in a single sample, or in two independent samples, needed to achieve statistical significance. It allows for the inclusion of the design effect caused by weighting, an element of sampling error often disregarded in publicly released surveys. See it here, or click MOE in the menu bar on our homepage.

Clients have asked our views on two areas of current interest in survey research – the use of social media to estimate public opinion, and the reliability of data produced from opt-in online panels of survey respondents. We summarize our conclusions, with extensive source references, in two new, publicly released briefing papers from Langer Research Associates – Social Media and Public Opinion and Opt-in Online Surveys.

June and July 2012: We’ve seen substantial news media pickup of our ongoing ABC News/Washington Post favorability polls, including(beyond ABC and the Post) recent mention in The Telegraph of London, Slate, Politico, The New York Times, The Des Moines Register, the Christian Science Monitor, The Hill, and the San Francisco Examiner, among many others.

Blue Shield of California Foundation today released “Connectedness and Continuity: Patient-Provider Relationships Among Low-Income Californians,” a survey produced by Langer Research Associates examining low-income Californians’ preferences in healthcare relationships and experiences with alternative models of care. Expanding on last year’s BSCF study, “On the Cusp of Change,” the survey reveals the importance of personal, ongoing healthcare relationships and demonstrates the extent to which new approaches, including team-based care and the increased use of technology, can achieve this connectedness, producing more satisfied and self-reliant patients beyond the confines of the traditional doctor-patient model. See Blue Shield of California Foundation’s news release here, and the full report here.

Businessweek’s Peter Coy explained our Bloomberg Consumer Confidence Index here, and our latest ABC News/Washington Post favorability report received coverage from The New York Times, the New York Post, The Hill and Huffington Post, among others.

Politico’s Mike Allen cited our analysis of the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll on the 2012 election as “the story that matters most today.” Beyond reporting by ABC and the Post, we’ve had other pickup of the poll this week in outlets including The Los Angeles Times, CNN, The National Journal, The Village Voice, Huffington Post, The New York Times and many others. Ron Brownstein of The National Journal dug in with his usual alacrity, here; and Gary Langer discussed the results on Public Radio International’s “To the Point” with Warren Olney, here.