CONSISTENCY IN POLICY THINKING Paul Allen Beck and Suzanne Parker This study examines consistency in opinion on a variety of important state and national policy questions. The data come from a two-wave panel study of adult Floridians conducted in 1981 and 1982. Wide variations in consistency of opinion over the 1-year period are found. Salience has an important impact on consistency, with respondents who find an issue salient almost always exhibiting more consistent opinions, but salience cannot explain the varia- tions in consistency across issues. The level of government on which the issue is focused (national or state) has no bearing on consistency. Most important, the particular nature of the issue itself, especially how central it is to the individual and how long it has occupied the political agenda (maturity), affects consistency of opinion. Centrality and maturity both contribute to issue attitude consistency and even can compensate for one another. Both highly central new issues and remote old issues can produce consistent attitudes, but defi. ciences in centrality seem'to override issue maturity. These findings illustrate the value of looking beyond opinion distributions to the meaning of the survey response. With informa- tion on consistency and its sources, the public opinion analyst can interpret polling results intelligently, and the study of public opinion can become more objective and scientific. Public opinion polling on policy issues has become a growth industry. Hardly a week passes without the revealed preferences of some public being announced on some issue. The media pay increasing attention to these polls, and the major media even sponsor their own in-house polling organizations. Politicians' antennae seem tuned increasingly to public opinion polls for inputs on policy formulation, and polls have become a crucial resource in political campaigns. Academic specialists on public opinion have been scarcely less attentive to this expression of the voxpopuli. The field has seen a renais- sance in scholarly activity, stimulated in part by the proliferation of academic polling organizations. This dramatic growth in the polling industry is having profound effects on American politics. Polls foster the impression of giving direct expression Paul Allen Beck and Suzanne Parker, Department of Political Science, The Florida State University. Political Behavior © 1985 Agathon Press, Inc. Vol. 7, No. 1 37