Telephone Polling

Examples of Telephone Polling in the following topics:

• Telephone and Internet Polling

  • Internet and telephone polls are very useful as they are much cheaper than most other polls and are able to reach a wide population.
  • Web polls are faster, simpler, and cheaper than many other polling methods.
  • An important aspect of telephone polling is the use of interviewers.
  • However, there are some disadvantages to telephone polling.
  • There are three main types of telephone polling: traditional telephone interviews, computer assisted telephone dialing, and computer assisted telephone interviewing ( CATI ).

• Telephone Surveys

  • A telephone survey is a type of opinion poll used by researchers.
  • As with other methods of polling, their are advantages and disadvantages to utilizing telephone surveys.
  • About 95% of people in the United States have a telephone (see ), so conducting a poll by via telephone is a good way to reach most parts of the population.
  • In certain polls, the interviewer or interviewee (or both) may wish to remain anonymous, which can be achieved if the poll is conducted over the phone by a third party.
  • In terms of election polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to minimize selection bias.

• A Closer Look at the Gallup Poll

  • The poll has been around since 1935.
  • The Gallup Poll is an opinion poll that uses probability sampling.
  • In 1986, Gallup shifted most of its polling to the telephone.
  • A computer would randomly generate phone numbers found from telephone exchanges for the sample.
  • More and more people in the United States were switching to using only their cell phones over landline telephones.

• The Problems with Polls

  • Another way to reduce the margin of error is to rely on poll averages.
  • This method is based on the assumption that the procedure and sample size is similar enough between many different polls to justify creating a polling average.
  • Since some people do not answer calls from strangers or refuse to answer the poll, poll samples may not be representative samples from a population due to a non-response bias.
  • For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without.
  • For example, some households have multiple phone numbers making them more likely to be selected in a telephone survey than households with only one phone number.

• Constructing Public Opinion Surveys

  • An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, and is designed to represent the opinions of a population.
  • An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a "poll," is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample .
  • Can be administered remotely via the Web, mail, e-mail, telephone, etc.
  • For example, polls or surveys that are conducted by calling a random sample of publicly available telephone numbers will not include the responses of people with unlisted telephone numbers, cell phone numbers, who are unable to answer the phone, and who do not answer calls from unknown/unfamiliar telephone numbers.
  • The following ways have been recommended for reducing non-response in telephone and face-to-face surveys:

• Random Sampling

  • An online poll in which a person is asked to given their opinion about something is not random because only those people with strong opinions, either positive or negative, are likely to respond.
  • This type of poll doesn't reflect the opinions of the apathetic .
  • A simple example would be to select every 10th name from the telephone directory (an 'every 10th' sample, also referred to as 'sampling with a skip of 10').
  • Online and phone-in polls also produce biased samples because the respondents are self-selected.

• The Literary Digest Poll

  • Incorrect polling techniques used during the 1936 presidential election led to the demise of the popular magazine, The Literary Digest.
  • The 1936 poll showed that the Republican candidate, Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, was likely to be the overwhelming winner.
  • In retrospect, the polling techniques employed by the magazine were to blame.
  • Although it had polled ten million individuals (of whom about 2.4 million responded, an astronomical total for any opinion poll), it had surveyed firstly its own readers, a group with disposable incomes well above the national average of the time, shown in part by their ability still to afford a magazine subscription during the depths of the Great Depression, and then two other readily available lists: that of registered automobile owners and that of telephone users.
  • Critique the problems with the techniques used by the Literary Digest Poll

• Collecting Data

  • Field work, or data collection, involves a field force or staff that operates either in the field, as in the case of personal interviewing (focus group, in-home, mall intercept, or computer-assisted personal interviewing), from an office by telephone (telephone or computer-assisted telephone interviewing/CATI), or through mail (traditional mail and mail panel surveys with pre-recruited households).
  • The Gallup Polls conduct public opinion polls with its results published daily in the form of data driven news.

• Types of Polls

  • A benchmark poll is generally the first poll taken in a campaign.
  • Brushfire polls are polls taken during the period between the benchmark and tracking polls.
  • An entrance poll is a poll that is taken before voters cast their votes.
  • Like all opinion polls, exit polls by nature do include a margin of error.
  • A straw poll or straw vote is a poll with nonbinding results.

• Polls Versus Votes

  • These are really polls rather than votes, but the developers may choose to treat the result as binding.
  • As with any poll, be sure to make it clear to the participants that there's a write-in option: if someone thinks of a better option not offered in the poll questions, her response may turn out to be the most important result of the poll.