Overview
Polling has become a very common practice of assessing the public’s viewpoint. It seems as if there’s a poll for everything! But how valid are these polls? And how difficult is it to truly assess public opinion?
Assignment
Pick a public policy issue that is of interest to you. You have been asked to conduct a poll on the issue.
Review pollster sites, such as
- Gallup Organization Links to an external site.
- Rasmussen Reports Links to an external site.
- Pew Research CenterLinks to an external site.
- National Opinion Research CenterLinks to an external site.
- Zogby InternationalLinks to an external site.
and take a look at polls on your issue.
1. Create your own poll. As part of your assignment package, include the following:
- Describe how you will conduct your poll (methodology).
- Draft the questions you will use (content).
- Identify potential sampling biases that could result from your poll and how you will try to avoid/prevent them (sampling error).
2. Conduct the poll, involving at least 10 people. For the purposes of this exercise, we will acknowledge that a random sampling is not realistic. Therefore, you may poll your classmates, family members, friends, etc. Collect the data from your poll and analyze the results. As part of your assignment package, summarize your findings on the following points:
- Summarize your results.
- Compare your results with results from the polls you found in the polling websites described above. How do these results differ? How are they the same? Can you explain the differences and similarities?
- Were the results of your poll what you expected? Why or why not?
3. Assess the polling process. As part of your assignment package, provide an analysis of the following points in approximately 225-250 words:
- What problems did you encounter?
- How challenging was it to craft neutral, unbiased questions?
- Did you ask the right questions? How might you have re-worded your questions to get better results?
- Which are better for polling: Open-ended questions, or close-ended questions? Explain your answer.
- What are your overall thoughts about polling? Do we rely too much on polling? How might we otherwise gain information about what people prefer?
Submit your assignment as a file upload.