Posts Tagged ‘Public Polls’
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
Election years are a perfect time to learn about (and brush up on) the fundamentals of survey research. Not only are the airwaves inundated with public opinion polling, but methodological experts are called upon to talk about developments and current best practices as new technologies and methods become central to measuring consumer and public opinion and behavior.
This week the Poynter Institute is offering a webinar of particular interest for PR professionals, whether or not you care about political polls. We also recommend it for any marketing professional because this type of polling is an exemplar of what all marketing research tries to achieve in measuring what people think and what they are likely to do. (more…)
Tags: data quality, journalism, Market Research, media, news, omnibus, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations
Posted in Public Polls, Public Relations, Resources and Recommendations | No Comments »
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Even if you are not involved in political polling, it is worth paying attention to the methods and best practices of political pollsters. One reason is that few other areas of research offer a way to completely validate one’s methods. Pollsters are using sampling and survey methods to predict the behaviors of a much larger population. Then in just one day that population behaves, we get a near-perfect count of exactly how they behaved, and we know whether the methods worked.
Several industry colleagues have recently been debating the merits of calculating and reporting “margins of error” in political polling, and pointed us to some surprising data from The New York Times: (more…)
Tags: journalism, public opinion, Public Polls, Sampling, statistics, survey
Posted in Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Many of us have uneasy feelings when reading statistics that presumably apply to ourselves and our own lives. Often the statistics do not seem to “fit” and seem to misrepresent the lives of real people from which the statistics are derived. It is with good reason that we chuckle when someone tells us that the average U.S. household has 0.64 children in it.
We were reminded of this upon hearing prominent news reports a few days ago that the average household income in the U.S. has fallen by about 10% in the past decade, most of it happening since the start of the recession four years ago. But does that mean most Americans’ incomes are falling? No. Though it is hard not to think so given how the data are being presented and reported.
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Tags: communication, data, Public Polls, statistics
Posted in Data Analysis & Analytics, Presenting Research, Public Polls, Turning Data into Stories | No Comments »
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Is it true that the Associated Press refuses to carry stories from online surveys? Yes, as odd as that seems nowadays. But news media face a difficult problem given how easy it is to conduct biased public opinion polling, especially now with online panels and social networks. So some news organizations like the Associated Press (AP), The New York Times, and ABC News have developed guidelines that specify for a survey or public opinion poll to be valid and reliable, it must be conducted by telephone.
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Tags: Data Collection, Internet, journalism, omnibus, Online Surveys, phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Omnibus Surveys, Online Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | No Comments »
Friday, August 19th, 2011
The most recent government estimates of cell phone usage among U.S. households were released a few weeks back, and the pace at which landline usage is disappearing is astonishing. Here are just some of the numbers:
- Thirty percent of U.S. households do not have a landline telephone
- An additional 16% have a landline telephone, but never or rarely use it to receive calls
- The percentage of households without landlines is increasing by about five to six percentage points each year
- Half of young adults under age 30 have no landline in their homes
- Half of adult renters have no landline in their homes
- Nearly four out of ten Hispanic adults have no landline in their homes
(more…)
Tags: consumer behavior, Data Collection, Internet, Market Research, phone surveys, Public Polls, Sampling, social media, survey technology
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
These days most researchers agree that if you want to do a random sample phone survey of the U.S. population, you ought to include cell phones. More than one-quarter of the population do not have landline telephones at home. Those who do have landline telephones are less likely than ever to answer them, and less likely than ever to participate in surveys.
But it is not easy to include cell phones. The sampling protocols and the post-stratification weighting become more complicated. You need to account for a higher probability of cell phone owners being in your sample, because most of them also have landlines. You can’t use automated or predictive dialing to call cell phone numbers. You can’t target geography as well, because area codes and exchanges have become mobile. And people get mad at you if they have to pay for incoming calls, so you need to offer cash.
What’s the bottom line effect on costs for a survey that includes cell phones? A recent study sponsored by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) documents the following: (more…)
Tags: bias, Data Collection, Market Research, phone surveys, population, public opinion, Public Polls, research, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, June 9th, 2011
A good chart is the best way to understand the law of diminishing returns when it comes to sample size. So for our June 2011 newsletter we built an interactive graph for choosing sample size. It’s cool, educational, and useful. Moreover, it will show you just how mind boggling the numbers behind sampling can be. It may even give you more sympathy for the majority of people who just don’t “get it” or believe it when it comes to statistical sampling.
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Tags: charts, Market Research, population, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling, survey respondents, visualizing data
Posted in Charts and Data Visualization, Data Collection, Market Research, Methods & Tools, Omnibus Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | No Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
A new study presented by two professors from Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was probably one of the liveliest and potentially disruptive presentations at least week’s annual meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in Phoenix.
Why? Because their research challenges the beliefs of many AAPOR-ites who disregard most online research as being theoretically indefensible since it is not based on probability sampling. The research presented was based on parallel surveys conducted last year, designed to allow careful comparison of three survey modes: (more…)
Tags: bias, census, Data Collection, Internet, journalism, media, news, Online Surveys, phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Online Surveys, Public Polls, Public Relations, Sampling | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
One resource that we give far too little thought in market research are the people who offer their time and thoughts about the stuff we are researching. They are truly the lifeblood of market research.
An article in the spring 2011 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly looks at trends over the last thirty years in Americans’ view of polling and market research surveys. The news is mixed. While the vast majority feel that public opinion polling is generally a good thing, fewer feel that market research surveys serve a useful purpose, and trust in the industry is not so great. The most worrisome news (but not surprising, given the number of truly bad surveys flooding our lives nowadays) is the steady decline in people saying that participating in research is interesting and in their best interest:
Declining Satisfaction with Surveys
In addition to the chart above, key statistics outlined in the article include: (more…)
Tags: Data Collection, data quality, Market Research, public opinion, Public Polls, Survey Design, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Future Trends, Market Research, Public Polls, Public Relations, Survey Design | No Comments »
Thursday, December 30th, 2010
The latest data from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey show that one quarter (25%) of U.S. adults do not have land-line telephones in their homes. So if you conduct a traditional random-digit-dial (RDD) phone survey, you will automatically be excluding one quarter of the population. Does it matter, given that surveys rarely interview everyone anyway? Probably. If those 25% are different from the remaining 75% in important ways, then excluding them will skew your survey findings.
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Tags: bias, Data Collection, data quality, ethics, Market Research, phone surveys, public opinion, Public Polls, research, Sampling, Survey Design, survey respondents
Posted in Data Collection, Methods & Tools, Public Polls, Sampling | No Comments »
