Vox Pop Labs - About Us

About Us

We use data to better understand people so we can help people better understand themselves

The term "vox pop" comes from the Latin vox populi, which means "voice of the people." It is often used by journalists to describe the practice of conducting interviews with randomly selected people in a public place to get their views on a given topic.

A vox pop gives the person being interviewed a chance to share their individual views while at the same time seemingly saying something about how the broader public feels about a particular issue. But a typical vox pop lacks both depth and breadth. We learn very little about why those interviewed think the way they do and we can't expect that their views reflect those of the general population.

At Vox Pop Labs, we use data science to revolutionize the vox pop. Our interactive survey applications provide each user with meaningful, data-driven insights about themselves—from their alignment with the options at hand when making a decision to how their views compare with those of others in their community.

In the time it would take to interview one person, our applications can survey hundreds of thousands of people. This allows for much more robust understanding of how public opinion operates than a typical vox pop can offer. It also dramatically improves the personalized insights our applications can provide to users.

Our mission

We bring together human and machine intelligence to help individuals and communities navigate important choices.

Our history

We are founded and operated by academics committed to public interest data science

The origins of Vox Pop Labs go back more than a decade to the first edition of Vote Compass. Inspired by applications in Europe that claimed to help voters determine their alignment with election candidates, Vox Pop Labs' founder sought to develop a similar application for the 2011 Canadian federal election. The result was Vote Compass, which was launched in partnership with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as the election campaign kicked off.

In its five-week run more than 2 million Canadians participated in Vote Compass, making it by far the most popular of all the CBC's election-related content. Studies have shown that it also made a positive impact on voter engagement. More than 50 editions of Vote Compass have since been produced for premier news organizations in countries all over the world.

Building on the success of Vote Compass, Vox Pop Labs has developed numerous other digital products with the aim of improving democratic participation by providing citizens with data to help inform their vote. To ensure that its efforts to increase democratic participation resulted in improved democratic representation, Vox Pop Labs also established a public opinion research practice. It has conducted hundreds of studies on public affairs and public policy for government institutions, media organizations, and university researchers—all of which seek to amplify the voices of the millions of people engaging with its products.

More recently, drawing on the extensive knowledge amassed in the process of developing its suite of digital election products, Vox Pop Labs began applying its decision intelligence models in new domains. The first application to emerge from this work is DegreeHub, which uses machine learning to infer from a user's survey responses the undergraduate programs and institutions to which they are best suited.