Public Opinion Through New Media

The Issue:  The ways in which questions are asked, the types of questions asked, and how people are polled all have significant effects on what the results to a poll may be. Sampling can also be performed in many ways, and it is generally skepticized by the public that polls (because of issues in sampling) do not portray accurate representations of populations.

Major Strength:  As far as the polling chapter is concerned, I thought Asher used the appropriate statistics to get his point across. I found the NSA example staggering. The discrepancy in results from one test to the other (with the question worded differently and conducted a day or two apart) really sold me on his ideas.

Major Weakness:  As with most of this type of writing, I find Asher to be somewhat presumptuous, at times. The Gallup poll on homosexuality is a good example. He speaks in maybes and possibilities when justifying the poll’s results. He has greater hold of my attention when he delivers explicit reasoning and isn’t so speculative.

Underlying Assumption:  Issues of question wording and context have more of a significant impact on poll results when dealing with topics for which those polled have less information. Asher’s first two examples from our reading were spot on. In each, the way the question is worded leads the poller to feel a certain way about the subject, such as the negative connotation for George W. Bush’s tax cut implementations as President. Asher also touches on an idea we lightly covered in class:  that news outlets offer poll results without validating the polls or giving the consumer any sort of context. As a proponent of sampling, Asher also believes that it is an appropriate practice that represents a population well.

Provocative Questions:  What is the future of polling? Is an online alternative plausible? After all, over 80 percent of homes have Internet access, compared to the current 70ish percent that have landline phones (that go unused in a certain amount of those homes). In what ways does spacing between poll questions effect results?

The Issue: Asher discusses the process of polling and the potential pitfalls of polling in how they are presented.

Major Strength: The major strength here is how takes a no-holds barred approach to the importance of evaluating the source of polls, how the questions are presented and the overall context of the questions. He also paints a very thorough picture of how each form of sampling is done, coupled with the strengths and weaknesses of each. He gives examples and details of which form of sampling works in certain instances opposed to others.

Major Weakness: I truly don’t see a lot of weaknesses in how he presents the information, however, I think there is a missed opportunity in presenting a case for the validity of polls overall. He discusses sampling error and the calculation of this, but it does not necessarily argue for or against polling. Asher gives his opinion on how one form of polling works in one scenario compared to another, but his overview approach doesn’t give his stance on how effective polls when so many different forms of bias can be included in the questioning or sample.

Underlying Assumption: I feel like the underlying assumption is there is no right or wrong determination through polling, only differences and opinion based on outlying factors.

Provocative Questions: If so many outliers and/or variables in how polls are presented impact the results, can polls be looked at as a valuable source of determining feelings toward a particular topic, specifically within the political realm?

When polls are brought to the public after a public debate of a topic, are the changes in the results a societal driven response (social proof – what’s the popular thing) or is it based on increased knowledge of a topic?

Can you trust any polls? Is it truly possible to draw an unbiased questionnaire that doesn’t influence the response to some degree – at least from one sample’s perspective?

Aren’t the results predictable, thus the manipulation of questions, or the sampled population result in desired or expected responses, ie., conservatives are targeted with questions to positively support Republican actions, or negatively response to Democrat actions and vice versa?

The issue: Pollsters often use a polling technique called “sampling”, a process that involves selecting a few respondents from a larger population. This theoretically should yield a fairly accurate representation of the opinions of the larger group.

Major Strength: Some people are in favor of sampling. Some are opposed to it. And while it is clear that Asher approves of sampling, he fairly presents the pros and cons of both sides of the dispute. In doing so he is able to introduce, defend and then disprove the “anti-sampling” mentality, thus strengthening his argument. By demonstrating knowledge of the opposite opinion, it heightens Asher’s credibility.

Major Weakness: Some studies hold up over time, but those centered on technology tend to become outdated pretty quickly. Looking at some of the dates that Asher uses to back his “telephone sampling” section, I’m seeing numbers like 1987 and 1996; and we know that technologically we are in a completely different place in 2014. In 2013 the Wall Street Journal reported that 71% of Americans still had a landline. While that number is relatively high, pollsters that sample are going to have a tough time painting an accurate picture when 3 out of every 10 people are “mobility unlisted.” With that in mind, I found it to be a bit of a stretch to buy into this section.

Underlying Assumption: As technology evolves, polling strategies, including sampling, must evolve too. Americans are skeptical to sampling, and they probably always will be. Sampling isn’t prefect, but that’s why the results are presented with a sampling error. And it’s the best system there is right now.

Provocative Questions: 1) Telephone sampling is still a very effective way to poll, but how much lower will that 71% landline rate drop in the next few years? 2) When someone figures out the best alternative to sampling, can that person call Nielsen? I’m tired of my favorite TV shows getting canceled.

The issue: Herbert Asher talks about polling and sampling, the different ways to do both and the various ways people can influence and/or create bias in responses to polls and samples.

Major strengths: Asher spends plenty of time defining and describing polling, sampling and the different kinds of both. He particularly does a good job in the sampling chapter, going into detail about nonprobability sampling, sampling designs, simple random and systematic sampling, stratified sampling, cluster and multistage sampling and the various types of telephone sampling. His examples of how the order of questions an the use of multiple items and indexes on questionnaires were also on point.

Major weaknesses: Perhaps it is just me, but I have a hard time believing that spacing between answer choices on a questionnaire could influence a certain answer. I understand order, wording and even vertical vs. horizontal answer choices, but not shaping. I also feel that the telephone sampling section needs to be updated. More and more households are using mobile phones in place of land lines and will most likely not answer a call from a number they do not recognize. It feels weird to type this, but it seems like telephone sampling could be an antiquated form of polling and sampling.

Underlying assumption: Asher seems to assume that sampling and polling has not changed much in recent times, focusing a lot on the various types of phone sampling techniques and not so much on Internet sampling techniques. The fact that this book was copyrighted in 2012 worries me and shows that (in my opinion) he is lacking in Internet polling and sampling techniques and information. You can also add this to the “major weaknesses” section.

Provocative questions: Asher mentions how the 2000 census says that 97.6 percent of American households have telephone service and that those without are “more likely to be uneducated, poor, in a minority group, of low occupational status and living in a single-adult household.” What would those stats look like today? It seems to be that fewer houses today have home telephones, so I am interested to see what the number would like now (unless it already included cell phones).

Additionally, what percentage of people/households today have unlisted phone numbers and how are pollsters combating this issue?

Have any polling companies considered polling via text message/social media?

The Issue 

Sampling is the process in which poll conductors acquire participants that accurately represent the target population of people polled.  Asher provides insight into which techniques do this correctly and which do not and how this affects public opinion.

Major Strength

A major strength of this writing is that Asher accounts for how changing technologies affect how we conduct polls and how this has caused skepticism towards the results of polls.  The section on “Sampling Techniques for Telephone Interviewing – Then and Now” is a perfect example of this and how being aware of how the public is using technology can greatly affect whether or not you are collecting an accurate representation of your target demographic.  Asher presents many different examples of how poll conductors are coping with the increased use of cell phones and how other factors may present challenges in conducting a telephone only poll.

Major Weakness 

The major weakness of this chapter lies in how Asher presents us information on Total versus Actual Sample Size. I do not think that the point is clearly driven home to the reader in this section.  In the example he uses he offers that it would be inaccurate to report just the findings of the last question, and I agree. However, I still find this reporting to be very misleading because I don’t think people reading this example would pick up on how this is good or bad ethics as far as polling and actual sample size is concerned.  I’m still confused on this topic and this section isn’t fully developed.

Underlying Assumption

Sampling error, confidence levels, and size of the sample are impotent pieces of information to report in the results of a public opinion poll to increase the validity of the poll.  Even with this information people will still be skeptical of the results because they don’t have the knowledge to understanding these techniques.

Provacative Questions 

With it being harder and harder with the advancement of technology to reach certain demographics and the importance of public opinion polling do you think we will see legislation in government to require citizens to answer certain polls from certain organizations if contacted? Would this be a viable solution to the hardships of polling that we see with the increase in people not wanting to be reached over the phone and only responding online to surveys that they feel strongly about?

The Issue:
Asher discusses how wording and context of questions can influence the outcome of a poll. Sampling techniques are also discussed in relation to how samples can be representative/generalized or not.

Major Strengths:
During his discussion of wording and context of questionnaires, he does a good job at making the reader understand what he means by giving examples of possible questions. He explains how question order or question format can cause different responses well. My favorite example was the question on US/Russian newspaper reporters because while reading the questions it really clicked to me what he was trying to explain.

Major Weakness:
This reading left me wanting to know more. I do not think it was fully explained as to how a poll maker should get the truest answer. I still do not understand how, if context, question order, question wording, question format and more influence a person’s response, will a poll ever be really correct.

Underlying Assumptions:
When it comes to the discussion of context, it seems as though Asher assumes everyone is thoroughly influenced by his or her surroundings/current events. It seems as though he thinks people are easily swayed by what is in the news, and he was trying to find causations between the decline in support for gay rights/marriage between May polls and July polls and the abundance of that topic in the news. Just because there was more discussion of gay rights in the news does not mean that it is necessarily the reason the poll results differed.

Provocative Questions:
How are poll results interpreted (by the poll maker) to be the most correct and most representative even if wording/context/order/format all play a role in how the poll taker understands and answers the questions? What makes one wording of a questions warrant the best results over another version of the same question?

The issue
Asher discusses different types of polling techniques, how they are conducted and how data and results can be skewed based on factors such as question order, wording, length of the poll and sample error.

Major strength
Asher does a good job at describing the different types of polls that exist, as well as why people respond the way they do. For example, I never thought about how much question order can affect responders’ answers. He gives the example of when asking people where the “state of the country” was headed, Bush got a lower approval rating than when asking about his specific performance first. He also makes a valid argument that respondents will often resist participation in a long survey or poll and could resent it if they were misled about its actual length. From a personal perspective, Morgan and I felt this way when we filled out our Census form last week (we are roommates). The questionnaire was longer than expected and we found ourselves making up some answers in a rush to get it done or to bypass questions we didn’t know the answer to…oops?

Another interesting argument Asher makes is that the visual design of self-administered questionnaires can affect responses. This might be why I failed to fill out an entire section of the “quiz” Professor Gaither gave us the first day of class; I didn’t notice the third column of answers. However, that may be due to user error (stupidity) and not a poorly-designed questionnaire. 🙂

Major weakness
I wonder if Asher is a bit too assuming. In his explanation of the Gallup poll on the legality of homosexual relations, he discusses the “possibility” of why the answers turned out the way they did. He tends to do this in most of his discussions about poll results. He’s not necessarily wrong, it just makes me wonder if he assumes too much.

Something else I was wondering about was the idea of cluster sampling. While Asher makes a point that cluster sampling allows for sampling within geographic regions based on county/city/township etc., I feel like he does not take into account that demographics of each household could vary. Sure, these households could all be in the same county or town, but who’s to say the ethnicity or income level of each is the same?

Finally, Asher describes how often telephone interviews can be the better alternative to door-to-door interviews. This contradicts what we saw in The Persuaders, when the campaign team goes to individuals’ doors to ask them about their voting choice. The documentary portrays this practice to be appealing to respondents (although I think I would have to agree with Asher that this is not usually the case).

Underlying assumption
I don’t want to go so far as to say Asher is insinuating that we can’t trust polls due to error and user perception, but I think he has something to say about not taking them at face value. While different types of polling practices allow for less space for error, such as snowball sampling, each one may not be free from error or bias. I think he wants to note though this is the reason researchers perform all these different types of polling, because they want to obtain the most factual information they can.

Provocative questions:
As technology advances, what are the implications for online polling? Asher doesn’t speak about this; where could the sampling error and biased be brought in in this arena?

Like I talked about in my example of the Census, how often do respondents just plainly reply blindly or incorrectly? And how much does this affect what we believe to be true?

The issue: The outcome of questions asked due to phrasing, context and order can have a large effect on the responsive of the participant. Sampling and the different techniques that can be used, and the publics opinion on sampling.

Major Strengths: Asher provides multiple examples of questions within polls that have been put in different order/ phrased differently and provided the statistics of the outcome of these polls. I feel that this example is extremely beneficial in understanding just how easily a participants answers can be changed or swayed when tailored to the response they want. I felt that a lot of the questions that related to how the government effected society, or a an issue that would of had a wider impact, the questions that played more to an individuals good nature were used at the beginning.

Major Weakness: The example of telephone sampling does not necessarily hold up in socity today. As we have previously discussed in class almost no one (or very few individuals and their families) have a house phone anymore, people are reluctant to pick up a random call, so telephone sampling would no longer be an effective way to sample a population. The book was written in 2012 so even then I feel like yes telephone sampling could be touched on however it would of been beneficial to go into internet sampling. In the polling chapter the conclusion referenced how the public had a very strong opinion on public financing, however I could not see the original reference to this in the text.

Underlying assumption: Asher’s conclusion was slightly confusing on whether the public were savvy to the effects of context in polling. However it seemed that with larger issues which effected the public they were more aware of loaded questions and the direction in which the survey wanted the questions to turn out. Sampling is a necessary technique, however does it still hold up today with extremely reliable information.

Provocative questions: As previously stated sampling in a non thorough way may be considered not a very effective technique, it would be interesting to find out what is the most effective form of sampling today?

The issue:  Poll questions (mostly those in which information is limited and citizens are less informed) are often worded in a misleading and loaded fashion, therefore, significantly changing the results of the poll and how the public accepts it.  In addition, there are many sampling techniques (snowball, probability, systematic, etc.) that each serves a different purpose to both the poll and the organization conducting the poll.

Major Strength:  A major strength of this reading is that Asher covers possibilities for why each method of sampling is important and why it would be the chosen alternative.  He uses his explanations and in-depth analysis (talking about time, thought and effort given) of each method to combat the anxiety and skepticism people have about polling techniques.

Major Weakness:  Asher talked about various kinds of polling methods like mail-in and telephone polls, however, I feel that he left out a method that is becoming increasingly more popular – the online polls.  I don’t have experience with telephone or mail-in polls, but I have been prompted and participated via online polls.  Most times it is on a website asking for feedback on a particular article or product the site is featuring.  For example, Cosmopolitan constantly generates polls like “What do you think of this outfit?” which require easy responses like one click of the mouse.  Since we are in the digital age and everything is going more towards a web presence I was surprised he didn’t include this type of modern polling in addition to the more traditional methods.

Underlying Assumption: I think a major underlying assumption is that researchers and those conducting the polls are using sampling techniques that are with the country’s best interest at heart and not just doing what is easiest for them.  Keeping the polling process as organic as possible will generate effective and accurate results instead of skewed and biases opinions erroneously reflecting the nation’s beliefs.

Provocative Questions:

1)   Asher encourages the public to be more aware about the selected population answering these polls on behalf of the nation.  He suggests we ask questions revolving around the willingness to participate and how the sample size was chosen.  With this is mind, why is it a surprise that every time the same poll is given to a different population the results are somewhat different?  If every sample size (of volunteers not hand picked citizens) is generated by people of different backgrounds, makeups, experiences, etc. then shouldn’t the results always be different?

2)   What is the likelihood of a person consenting and participating in a poll when approached via phone or mail-in form?  What is the percentage of individuals who actually participate verses the number of people they contacted in hopes of getting a varied enough sample?

The issue: Sampling is the selection of a subset of responders from a broader population. The majority of Americans find sampling problematic because it they think the sample can not represent the entire population. Asher attempts to demystify the process of population sampling and discredit any lack of faith in the process.

Major strength: Asher goes into a good amount of detail for both sides. While he talks about how American’s don’t trust the sampling aspect of polling, he goes into each method of sampling and into the science of selecting a sampling section. He comes at it to sort of disprove people’s feelings about sampling by showing that there is an actual method to the practices and it’s just not the first 30 people that pass him on the street.

Major weakness: He goes way into telephone polling, then and now. I think that this aspect of effect polling is outdated. Most people with cell phones have caller ID and will not pick up a phone number they do not know just because of this method of sampling. This makes the data skewed because it only represents a certain type of person from that group that will even answer the phone at this point. While he offers solutions to current telephone polling, I feel as if this way of polling is ineffective at this point in technology around the country.

Underlying assumption: As the world grows and technological advances continue, sampling techniques must adapt to these changes. While most Americans would say that they are skeptics of population sampling, there is really no answer to their skepticism. Either sampling continues to represent a certain group of people or we have no reflections at all. It’s completely unfeasible to think that a company could get every individuals opinion on everything every time they wanted a reflection on something. Eating one bite of a piece of cake is probably indicative about how the entire cake tastes, the same happens in sampling populations.

Provocative questions: What are some examples where this sampling process was used to relay information in a false manner? What is the likelihood to be one of the people asked to be represented in a sample as an average American? Would you pick up a phone call if it was a number you didn’t recognize?