PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- When Brown University released poll results on Providence voter attitudes towards their city and their mayor on Thursday, it did not disclose a cluster of questions posed during the survey about the capital city's Latino population.
As one of the people contacted during the November 13-16 public opinion survey, former Providence Journal columnist M. Charles Bakst recalls the "student questioner telling me that Providence is 38 percent Latino and asking, in essence, did I think that was good or bad.''
He also recalled being told "that more Latinos were running for office, or getting involved in politics - something like that - and did I think that was good or bad. There also was a question to the effect of whether I had noticed if more Latinos were now living in my neighborhood."
This was the response from Brown Prof. Marion Orr, the director of the university's A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, when asked why these questions - and the responses they elicited - were omitted from the press release about the poll that went out on Thursday:
"Since we are an academic institution, Taubman is an academic center that conducts polling and we often include additional questions as part of research projects underway. This was the case in the recent poll.
"Providence is a fascinating place to study issues related to race and ethnicity. I have published many academic journal articles on Providence,'' he added.
Orr has not yet responded to a Journal request for all of these undisclosed questions and answers.
But when asked, his predecessor at the helm of the Taubman Center said he did not ask undisclosed questions.
Former Brown University Political Science Prof. Darrell West said, "People always argue over question wording and sequencing so we found the safest policy was to release all the questions and people could judge for themselves whether we asked questions in the right way.''
Beyond that, "we published the results of all the poll questions when I was running the survey. That allowed people to judge question order and wording for themselves.''
West is currently the vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.