Since 1976, the Gallup organization has rated popular professions for honesty and integrity.

This year, real estate agents fell off the list. Was there a reason?

Current events may have played a part. This year, firefighters, nurses, and the U.S. military took top honors in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, replacing a few professions like TV reporter and real estate agents.

Frank Newport, editor of the Gallup Poll News service, says, "We have a long list of professions we have developed over the years, and it has become too long to ask about every profession every year, so we made the decision to rotate some professions off and on."

While there are some core professions that make the list annually, like doctors and teachers, Newport says that real estate agents don't need to be on the list every year.

"We make our own decisions what we think is appropriate to ask," explains Newport. "If a profession is in the news like firefighters have been, they are more likely to make the list, and there may be an increase or decrease for an economic sequence.

Historically, real estate agents have not done as well on the list as many in the industry would have liked. Real estate agent rankings have hardly budged since 1993, except when they dipped in 1998, and surged higher in 1999. The percent of respondents ranking the honesty and ethics of real estate agents high or very high has hovered between 13 and 17 percent since the poll began in the late 1970's.

"The commission element may be a factor in why they don't rank higher than they do," suggests Newport. "The public may perceive less honesty because of salespeople who are on commission."

Do professions make an effort to improve once they have been ranked on the Gallup Poll? The National Association of Realtors, for example, spends millions annually on public relations campaigns to raise positive awareness of Realtors, and to differentiate their members from other licensees who may not follow the NAR's standards of practice and Code of Ethics.

Last year, vice president of public relations for the NAR Steve Cook said, "We can't prove that the NAR Public Awareness Campaign is responsible for the three-point uptick in the way the public perceives real estate agents, but the Gallup findings mirror what we found in the Riter Research study that we conducted to measure the effectiveness of the Public Awareness Campaign. We found public attitudes towards REALTORS have improved more than Gallup's ranking of real estate professionals."

"That's not our purpose to affect change - ours is to measure public opinion," says Newport. "Car salesmen are at the bottom, but improving their image is up to them. The clergy dropped when the scandals first came out about televangelists, now the firefighters are high for obvious reasons. We are happy to find our data is being used."

Will real estate agents be back on the list soon? After all, the real estate industry is largely credited by no less than Alan Greenspan as helping to keep the teetering economy afloat. Real estate sales impacts approximately 15 to 20 percent of the Gross National Product as home sales stimulate other sectors of the economy, such as retail.

"Real estate agents will be back next year," promises Newport.

According to ARELLO, there are over 2 million current real estate licensees. About 750,000 are Realtors, or members of the National Association of Realtors.