• Susan B Sorenson.
• University of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Electronic address: sorenson@upenn.edu.
• Prev Med. 2015 Oct 1; 79: 50-4.

ObjectivePublic opinion polling about gun policy is routinely conducted and often disregarded. The purpose of this research is to explore ways in which surveys can be made more useful to policy makers, researchers, and the general public.MethodsA stratified random sample of 1000 undergraduates at a private, urban university was recruited for an online survey about proposed gun policies. A total of 51.7% answered the questions analyzed herein. Including but going beyond typical assessments of agreement, the survey elicited respondent evaluations of the effectiveness of seven gun policies under two randomly assigned conditions: the type of gun violence (e.g., homicide, suicide, violent crime) and its magnitude. Participants were asked to estimate the effectiveness of each policy, including the possibility of making things worse.ResultsParticipants indicated strong support for all policies and expected each to be effective with one exception - a policy designed to increase the number of guns on the scene, that is, putting armed police in schools. Persons who did not support other policies, on average, did not expect them to make things worse. Telling participants about the scope of the violence did not but the type of gun violence did affect effectiveness ratings.ConclusionsAsking about expected effectiveness of (vs. general support for) a policy might identify some optimism: Even people who don't support a policy sometimes think it will be effective. Findings suggest that surveys about the effectiveness of gun violence policies likely assess views that exclude suicide, the most common form of gun-related mortality.Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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