opinion

Public opinion

In contemporary usage, public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by a population (e.g., a city, state, or country), while consumer opinion is the similar aggregate collected as part of marketing research (e.g., opinions of users of a particular product or service). Typically, because the process of gathering opinions from all individuals are difficult, expensive, or impossible to obtain, public opinion (or consumer opinion) is estimated using survey sampling (e.g., with a representative sample of a population).

Group opinion

In some social sciences, especially political science and psychology, group opinion refers to the aggregation of opinions collected from a group of subjects, such as members of a jury, legislature, committee, or other collective decision-making body. In these situations, researchers are often interested in questions related to social choice, conformity, and group polarization.

Scientific opinion

"Scientific opinion" may reflect opinions on scientific concerns as articulated by one or more scientists, published in scholarly journals or respected textbooks, both of which entail peer-review and rigorous professional editing. It may also refer to opinions published by professional, academic, or governmental organizations about scientific findings and their possible implications.

A related—but not identical—term, scientific consensus, is the prevailing view on a scientific topic within the scientific community, such as the scientific opinion on climate change.

Scientific opinion(s) can be "partial, temporally contingent, conflicting, and uncertain"^[2] so that there may be no accepted consensus for a particular situation. In other circumstances, a particular scientific opinion may be at odds with consensus.^[2]

Scientific literacy, also called public understanding of science, is an educational goal^[3] concerned with providing the public with the necessary tools to benefit from scientific opinion.

Legal opinion

A "legal opinion" or "closing opinion" is a type of professional opinion, usually contained in a formal legal-opinion letter, given by an attorney to a client or a third party. Most legal opinions are given in connection with business transactions. The opinion expresses the attorney's professional judgment regarding the legal aspect of the transaction. The opinion can be "clean" or "reasoned".^[4] A legal opinion is not a guarantee that a court will reach any particular result.^[5] However, a mistaken or incomplete legal opinion may be grounds for a professional malpractice claim against the attorney, pursuant to which the attorney may be required to pay the claimant damages incurred as a result of relying on the faulty opinion.

Judicial opinion

A "judicial opinion" or "opinion of the court" is an opinion of a judge or group of judges that accompanies and explains an order or ruling in a controversy before the court. A judicial option generally lays out the facts that the court recognized as being established, the legal principles the court is bound by, and the application of the relevant principles to the recognized facts. The goal is to demonstrate the rationale the court used in reaching its decision.^[6] Judges in the United States are usually required to provide a well-reasoned basis for their decisions and the contents of their judicial opinions may contain the grounds for appealing and reversing of their decision by a higher court. Judicial opinions are discussed further in the articles on common law and precedent.

Editorial opinion

An "editorial opinion" is the evaluation of a topic by a newspaper as conveyed on its editorial page.