WITHIN a day of the publication of the last in the series of opinion survey results in the latest Stone Polls, Dr Ian Boxill’s telephone was ringing off the hook.

Many of the calls, predictably, originated from the talk shows. Everybody wanted a piece of Boxill, who had just been publishing his first polls as head of the Stone Polling Team that conducted the August 2006 survey.

It was at the end of an excruciating week for the politicians… on both sides.

For the first six days of the polls, Portia Simpson Miller was creaming Bruce Golding. The Labourites winced with each day’s results and cursed Boxill and his team under their breaths, while the Comrades celebrated.

Then on the seventh day, the polls turned on its own head and showed Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) within striking distance of Simpson Miller’s People’s National Party (PNP), reversing what might have been seen as the PNP gone clear. It was the Comrades’ time to curse the pollsters.

Jamaicans are notorious for loving the polls when the numbers favour their sides and, conversely, hating them when they favour the other side. Still, Boxill was taken off guard by the overwhelming response to the latest results.

“You expect some reaction, of course, but I must say it caught me a bit by surprise,” said Boxill in his shy but engaging manner.

The Barbadian-born naturalised Jamaican harbours no illusions about his new-found celebrity status. He knows that Professor Carl Stone had long ago established the awesome credibility of the Stone Polls and no other polls come close.

“Carl was an extraordinary researcher. He had an acute understanding of the Jamaican people,” Boxill recalled. “This is critical for political polling, as for any other research. The accuracy of the numbers is absolutely necessary, but knowing the subject really well is what gives the researcher the edge. Carl Stone understood the wider Jamaican politics and that made him a great pollster. You kind of want to pattern yourself off someone like that,” Boxill admitted to his admiration for the late professor.

Stone was known to be “hard to get on with” and Boxill, who first came to Jamaica to do his Masters in Social Sciences in 1986, didn’t quite know what to make of the professor’s interest in him.

“Several people took an interest in me and were very helpful, people like Louis Lindsay and Carl Stone. I knew Carl first as a student. We communicated a lot and I used to follow his work.

“When I wrote a column for The Gleaner, Carl would come to me after a column to discuss the subject. He used to go ou t of his way to talk to me about certain issues. For some strange reason, we got along very well,” said Boxill.

Stone’s work rubbed off on Boxill. Right after Boxill completed his Masters in 1989, he went to the United States to pursue a doctorate in sociology, concentrating on political economy. He returned to Jamaica in 1992 and took up the post of lecturer in the Social Sciences Department at the UWI, teaching research methodology.

He had by then decided to make the island his home and had married a Jamaican treasure in Rachael Boxill.

Dr Boxill’s foray into polling research came out of a project he was doing with some international organisations. For example, he had spent a year in New Zealand developing a course to work with the indigenous Maori people – on issues of social and economic development.

He has done substantial work with the Bretton Woods institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – collaborating with colleagues on issues such as the impact of structural adjustment on the environment and issues of poverty.

“I have done work with organisations like the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation in Agriculture (IICA), among others,” he added.

Boxill was being prepared for the Stone Polls, though he wouldn’t have known it at the time, when he conducted an opinion survey looking at democratic values in Jamaica, as part of a larger study by the Latin American Public Opinion Programme (LAPOP) out of Vanderbilt University in the US.

During that study, he worked with colleagues like Roy Russell, Arlene Bailey and Balford Lewis. Russell and Bailey would later join him on the Stone Poll Team.

Boxill also did a lot of public opinion surveying of Mexico’s tourism on how it affected the indigenous communities, through a project of the University of the West Indies in collaboration with the University of Quintana Roo in Mexico. He was lead researcher for the UWI on the project.

While all this was going on, Wyvolyn Gager, the former editor-in-chief and first woman to hold the post in the centuryold Gleaner, was looking for a topnotch pollster to carry on Carl Stone’s legendary work.

Gager had been appointed CEO of the Stone Polling Organisation, now bought out by Gorstew Limited, the holding company for the ATL Group which is owned by Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart. Gorstew’s plan was to make the Stone Polling Organisation a Caribbean-wide polling company. But to do so it would require only the best.

Gager thought of Ian Boxill, head of the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the UWI, Mona.

The department has a Centre for Population, Community and Social Change which had been conducting surveys and different types of research and training on a variety of social and political matters for almost a decade. It had large data bases on numerous aspects of Jamaican life.

Much of Boxill’s research is linked to that Centre, which has an impressive national, regional and international reputation.

“At first, I was reluctant because I had a pretty full plate,” said Boxill. “I am head of a department and I have several research projects going.”

He gave it more thought and decided finally that he would do it. Once he had made up his mind, the team came quickly to his mind.

“In fact, it was because I knew I could get a good team that I was able to agree,” said Boxill. The team he put together comprises:

. Dr Lawrence Alfred Powell (PhD MIT), a senior lecturer in methodology in the Department of Government, UWI. His specialisations include cross-cultural survey research, political psychology and media politics.

. Roy Russell, a statistician and survey researcher who lectures in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work.

. Dr Lloyd Waller, a lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, where he specialises in research methodology and etransformations in government and politics.

. Arlene Bailey, an information systems specialist in the

Department of Sociology,

Psychology and Social work,

and who is involved in

survey research.

The team has at its disposal, a formidable field force of researchers led by Hugh Marsh, under whom the polls developed its credibility over many years dating back to Carl Stone. Rosemarie Stone, widow of Stone, remains a consultant to the Organisation, ensuring continuity and quality control.

Pound for pound, the team is one of the best polling teams anywhere. Powell, for example, worked for many years with the leading pollster for the American Cable News Network (CNN) which collaborated with the famous Gallup Poll and he is now polling director of the Centre for Leadership and Governance in the Department of Government.

Russell is a sampling guru.

“If you want to understand sampling in Jamaica, Russell is the man,” said Boxill. “They are all excellent. I couldn’t ask for a better team.”

Boxill could hardly have guessed that his 43rd birthday would find him immersed in the numbers from his first political opinion survey. But although the experience was new in respect of the specific focus on political opinion, it went better than he expected.

“It was exciting. This is what excites us as researchers,” he admitted, noting that his department at UWI was very supportive of him and his team.

“The faculty has a strong tradition of research. The Department of Government where Carl Stone was, is where it all started. We are especially happy to be involved in the polls because Carl Stone started it. We are continuing the tradition and we will endeavour to maintain the reputation of the Stone Polls,” he pledged.