LAST Sunday, the Ateneo launched its Sesquicentennial, or the passage of 150 years since the Jesuits returned to the Philippines, on June 14, 1859.

One of the many fields in which the Ateneo has achieved distinction, in the past century and a half, is social survey research in general, and public opinion polling in particular. Studies by Jesuit social scientists, such as “The farmer said No,” by Fr. Francis Madigan, and “Let my people lead,” by Fr. Frank Lynch, recognized the importance of grass-roots attitudes as revealed by sample surveys.

I got my first experience in survey design as a consultant (taking time off from the UP economics faculty) in the Ateneo’s Institute of Philippine Culture’s study “Owners, lessees, tenants,” on land reform in Nueva Ecija.

The Ateneo involvement in political opinion polling came about through the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference for Human Development (BBC), formed early during martial law, using tenets articulated by Father Horacio de la Costa.

Early in 1984, the BBC’s research committee, then co-chaired by Ateneo president Fr. Joaquin Bernas and banker Victor Barrios, decided that BBC should undertake an open national opinion poll about the political situation. (Barrios and I were high school classmates at the Ateneo; Fr. Bernas was our Latin teacher in senior year.)

Though a member of the committee, I was absent when the decision was made; I didn’t even know it was on the agenda. Barrios informed me later that I was assigned to direct the survey, and that he would raise the funds from the business community. A BBC subcommittee designed the questionnaire and did the analysis, outsourcing the fieldwork and data processing to a private research firm.

I presented the survey findings at a BBC breakfast forum, to about 20 people including representatives from media. The key result was that two-thirds of Filipinos objected to Marcos’ power to legislate by decree and to detain persons by fiat. It was the first open opinion poll showing the unpopularity of the Marcos dictatorship.

The 1984 BBC poll became an embarrassment to the Development Academy of the Philippines, because the Asian Wall Street Journal named me as DAP vice president for research. In fact, DAP had no connection to the BBC poll; in any case, I resigned from DAP therewith.

BBC did a second political poll in 1985, with essentially the same results. I recall Fr. Bernas rushing me to complete it, and asking him if he wanted to know first what it said about Filipino attitudes towards the Church; he said No, and that I should just go ahead. That’s a Jesuit for you. This time, about 500 people packed the Makati Sports Club to listen to the presentation. Cardinal Sin was at the head table, for moral support.

Next came a Ford Foundation funded project of four open national polls over two years. It was, by design, a joint project of Ateneo and the non-stock, non-profit Social Weather Stations, established in August 1985. These polls were meant to lead up to the presidential election of 1987, but were overtaken by the snap election of February 1986 – Marcos had swallowed his own propaganda that the 1985 BBC survey predicted that he would win a snap election.

In planning for the first Ateneo-SWS poll, of May 1986, the issue was raised on whether to risk asking whom the respondents voted for in the snap election – suppose most said they had voted for Marcos? I appreciate the Ateneo for agreeing to ask it; the result was that 64 percent said they had voted for Cory Aquino. (The risk was actually small; we didn’t know about the “spiral of silence” phenomenon yet.)

In early 1987, we had to decide whether to do an Ateneo-SWS poll just before the May election, to maximize its potential to predict the outcome, or much earlier, to enhance its value to campaigners. We took the second option. The March 1987 poll found only half of Cory’s senatorial candidates in the winning column; her campaign manager Paul Aquino told his staff that they could not afford to sleep any more. Eventually, with the help of “Cory magic,” 22 of her 24 candidates won. (But critics claimed that the survey failed, because the election outcome was different.)

After the joint project expired, Ateneo and SWS shared the briefing revenues 50-50 as pre-arranged, and then did polls separately. With funding from various foundations, Ateneo did at least six national polls over 1988-1992. In 1992, its post-election poll found some 40 percent saying they had voted for Fidel Ramos, even though he had won with only some 25 percent of the official count – but it was again the “spiral of silence” at work.

In those years, the media used to confuse the Ateneo and SWS polls. Some of our mail was forwarded from Loyola Heights, and some from Pag-Asa, to our first office at the Philippine Social Science Center. (Since 1999, SWS has been in Sikatuna Village.)

Ateneo may not be doing political polls now, but it stays abreast of the field. I have taught opinion polling, on invitation of the late Doreen Fernandez, in the Ateneo department of mass communications, which is where the subject belongs – going beyond mass broadcasting or printing, and including the science of mass listening. I enjoyed most a class where several of the students were young Jesuits, one of whom (the best student) was just ordained a month ago. His first assignment is a chaplaincy; but he’ll know what to do if a survey opportunity turns up.

The Jesuits have high-quality survey research, and hence opinion polling, capacity not only at Ateneo de Manila but also in Ateneo de Naga, Xavier University, Ateneo de Davao, and perhaps elsewhere too. They have the means to do “surveys for others” when called for.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.