Gallup Poll Worksheet
What is more important than the actual number of people who need to be interviewed for a given sample.
is to some degree less important than the soundness of the fundamental equal probability of selection principal.
Why is it important to go through this complicated process?
it is important because estimates are that about 30% of American residential phones are unlisted.
What is "equal probability of a selection" and why is it important.
states that if every member of a population has equal probability of being selected in a sample, then that sample will be representative of the population.
What is the key concept a person should bear in mind when analyzing poll data
that public opinion on a given topic cannot be understood by using only a single poll question asked a single time.
How does gallup ask people who they will be voting for in an election
the survey researcher can include the name of the vice presidential candidates, along with the presidential candidate. They will ask the question in a ways that mimics the voting experience as much as possible.
What is the first step in the gallup process
we clearly identify and describe the population that a given poll is attempting to represent.
How does gallup ask people about presidential job approval?
"Do you approve or disapprove of the job (blank) is doing as president?"
List three reasons Americans contact the gallup organization.
1. To ask how our results can differ so much from their own personal impressions of what people think 2. To learn how we go about selecting people for inclusion in our polls 3. To find out why they have never been interviewed.
How big does a survey sample have to be before there are fewer and fewer accuracy gains from increasing the the sample size? How big is a gallup sample size ?
500-700 or more for there to be fewer and fewer accuracy gains. Gallup sample size is 1,000-1,500.
What is a split sample technique
A randomly selected half of a given survey is administered one wording of a question, while the other half is administered the other wording.
How are results tabulated?
Continuously and automatically by the computers.
What did a recent "poll on polls " reveal about how believable people think polls are.
Said that polls do a good job of forecasting elections and are accurate when measuring public opinion on other issues.
What is gallups target audience? Who is NOT included ?
Target: adults 18 years or older living in telephones households. Not included: College students living on campus, armed forces personnel living on military bases, prisoners, hospital patients and others living in group institutions.
what is the margin of error?
The margin of error indicates that the true rating is very likely to be between 53% and 47%. It is very unlikely to be higher or lower than that.
what does gallup do if there is no answer or the phone is busy? Why?
The number will be recalled hours later, and then to be recalled on subsequent nights of the survey period. This will correct for a possible bias that could occur if we included interviews only with people who had answered the phones.
What advantage does gallup have in asking questions about key issues?
They have been conducting polls a and research for many years at a time, which will give them a greater advantage.
How accurate were exit polls for presidential elections between 1936 and 1984.
They were highly accurate with the average error in Gallups final estimate of the election being less than 3 percentage points.
What is the next step in the gallup process
We choose or design a method that will enable us to sample our target population randomly
What are primary standard caveats observed when interpreting poll results.
Question wording, question order, the sample population, the sample size, etc.
Why does gallup try to reach people at home
Reaching people at home is the starting place for almost all national surveys.
What does gallup do once a household has been reached by phone? Why?
Gallup attempts to assure that an individual within that household is selected randomly.
How many interviews does it take to provide an adequate cross section of Americans
Not many that is. Current us population is 187 million
How were the earliest polls conducted? When did this take place?
Earliest polls were conducted in person. This started around 1935-to the mid 1980s
How did the Gallups polls change in 1986? why ?
In 1986 a very high proportion of Americans had at least one telephone in their homes to make telephone interviews a viable and substantially less expensive alternative to the in-person method.
What is the fundamental goal of a survey.
Is to come up with the same results that would have been obtained had every single member of a population been interviewed.
