Posts Tagged ‘public opinion’

Can Tweeting Replace Polling?

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

The idea that online panel surveys can replace telephone surveys ruffles feathers among my colleagues at the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). So what would they think of using Twitter posts as a substitute for phone surveys?

The idea seems crazy, but as reported in Science, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that certain kinds of twitter data can give them a good read on public sentiment. (more…)

How to Conduct a Telephone Survey for Gold Standard Research

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Telephone surveys are still considered the gold standard for rigorous public opinion polling and market research.  The reason is that virtually every household in the U.S. can be reached by telephone, and therefore we have careful methods of determining the probability that any individual person is included in a sample to be surveyed.  Knowing this probability is at the core of statistical inference, which makes mathematical purists very happy.

Here are the steps involved in conducting a rigorous “gold standard” telephone survey of the U.S. population: (more…)

Top Trends of the Decade: Looking Back

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

As an industry driven by data and information, market research and public opinion polling has seen dramatic changes in the last ten years and will no doubt change quickly and in big ways during the next ten.

Looking back, here are what we consider to be the five biggest changes that shaped current challenges faced by market research and opinion polling: (more…)

Two Ways to Find Data for a PR Story

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

In a recent blog post entitled Data-Driven Journalism, Walker Sands, a Chicago PR agency, outlined two ways to get media placement for your company or your client with research.  The premise is that journalists and readers are hungry for interesting stories, and in today’s data-driven world some of the most interesting stories come from – of all places – statistics.  Ken Gaebler, founder of the agency, notes that there are two effective approaches.  In his words, “You can mine data or you can make data.” (more…)

The Walmart “Poll” of Chicago Residents

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Mistakes to Avoid when Conducting a Public Relations Survey

Surveys and polls can be powerful tools to understand what people are thinking and doing, and they can provide good data for public relations efforts and community outreach.  Unfortunately they can also be gimmicks, which erodes trust in polling and in the organizations sponsoring them.

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