Our focus groups aim to capture the opinions and feelings of cross-sections of Americans to a general readership.
One question I regularly get from Times readers is how we pick people for our ongoing series of Opinion focus groups — not so much the specific individuals (that's done by a professional recruiter) but rather the intent behind why we pick the groups we select. |
Sometimes it's because we want to explore a question about political life in America, like how Florida voters see Ron DeSantis or how skeptical Biden voters feel about his re-election campaign. Sometimes we want to go deep with one demographic group, like asking "what happened to America?" to a group of people in their 70s and 80s, or talking to a group of transgender people about how they navigate and experience society today. Sometimes we want to delve into a big moment that reverberates across party lines, like our next groups on abortion rights and the coming Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. |
And sometimes we want to go deep on an essential part of our social and cultural fabric — as we do on the subject of trust in our latest group, with a mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents from around the country. |
In a politically divided country, where confidence in American institutions is low and concern about our ability to come together to solve problems is high, we wanted to explore a range of questions: Do you trust your fellow Americans? Is it getting easier or more difficult to trust people than in the recent past? What changed? Is trust easier to lose or easier to build? And what are ways to build it? Donald Trump, iPhones and economic anxiety were just some of the drivers of mistrust among our participants. But many people in the group appeared to still, on a basic level, trust their fellow Americans, and trust in the ability of people to come together in the face of a local or national crisis (at least for a little while). |
With this and all of our focus groups, a core goal is to bring the opinions, ideas and arguments of cross-sections of Americans to a general readership, and to try to get a deeper understanding of the ties that bind, and sometimes fray, in our society and democracy. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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