Wednesday, November 2, 2016

CBS News and Random Digit Dialing

CBS News Poll Methodologies
CBS News conducts surveys by telephone of anyone 18 years or older living in the continental United States. The sample of participants is random and is not chosen based on race, age or any other characteristic. In order to conduct the surveys, CBS gathers telephone numbers through a random search done entirely by the computer. This process is a probability sample called “random-digit dialing”, which gives every home an equal chance of being called by their interviewers, provided they have a landline. In general, CBS talks to 1,000 people out of the random sample they have determined.

Strengths
•  All people in target population have an equal chance of being interviewed
•  You can easily calculate the margin of sampling error
•  Most accurate form of survey research
Weaknesses
•  Non-response bias can be a problem
•  Response rate calculations can be imprecise
•  Not everyone has a landline. People who just have a cell phone can be systematically excluded.

Why is this methodology important?

Random-digit dialing is important in election opinion polling because it is has the best chance of capturing the real opinions of others in the population. The respondents are not chosen based on their political views or any other characteristics, which is important to understand when dealing with political polls. Finally, CBS pollsters weight their sample according to Census demographics to try to get an accurate, representative sample.
by Lauren Cuddy

Gravis Marketing Partners with One America News Network For National Polling

Nonpartisan research firm Gravis Marketing conducted a national poll on October 20 for One America News Network (OANN), a conservative cable news television channel.

Bias in the Numbers
Analysts should proceed with caution when using this data. FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings of historical accuracy, statistical bias, and methodology of research found that Gravis has a bias towards Republican candidates, in line with sponsor OANN’s political bias. In the poll, 40 percent of voters said they represented the Democratic party, 33 percent represented the Republican party, and 27 percent represented the Independent party.

Methodology Considerations
Gravis used automated telephone calls to reach about 2,100 registered voters. Pollsters try for randomly selected samples, but older Americans tend to respond better to automated calls. More older Americans use landline phones, which are easier to use for responding to surveys. Older voters were prevalent in the recent poll.
Other concerns include losing a younger audience that will not listen to an automated recording. In an effort to combat this potential skew in the results, Gravis weights the polling participants by anticipated voting demographics. Also, automated recordings get more declines overall, and this is hard to account for with weighting.
There are some benefits to automated polling, though.

The absence of an interviewer also has its perks. The questions asked will remain consistent across interviews. In addition, research shows that people will even respond more honestly when they do not have to share their answers with a person directly.
by Katrine Ryan

Strong predictive power from the Marist poll

EVERYTHING TO KNOW ABOUT THE MARIST POLL
A recent Marist College Poll surveyed 1,128 adults in Pennsylvania. The survey was conducted over the phone through calling randomly generated landline and mobile devices over four days  The pollsters further randomized their results by asking for different members of each household, starting by requesting the youngest male and moving from there. Having a random selection ensures that the poll will ask a representative sample of the overall population. Then researchers can use that data to draw conclusions about the state as a whole.
Marist surveys both registered voters and likely voters. The result to focus on comes from the likely voters.

ABOUT THE MARIST COLLEGE POLL

The Marist poll is co-sponsored by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News. The partnership conducts semi-regular polls in traditional swing states, like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The poll is conducted at the Marist Institute for Public Opinion located at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Marist has a reputation for being a very good predictor of voter trends. 

by Jasper Pike

Public Policy Polling and automatic polls

How Public Policy Polling (PPP) Gathers Data

Data is expensive. The time and resources it takes to gather accurate statistics make for data collection companies which cost hundreds of dollars for subscriptions to their results. But data quality matters: quality data builds quality insights. PPP strives collect quality data economically:
-       Using Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
o   Using an automated system to ask questions costs much less than employing a person to ask the questions.
o   It also can reduce interviewer bias because each participant is asked the same questions in the same tone.

-       Calling only registered voters
o   PPP builds its samples from state voter registrations.
o   Polling registered voters is more accurate responses than random calls because researchers can know that the respondent is able to vote.
o   Voter registration data also gives PPP the gender, race, party affiliation, age, address, precinct, municipality, county, districts, and voter history of participants


There are downsides. Few people enjoy being called by pollsters and even fewer like it when the voice on the other line is computerized. If they decline to participate, the integrity of the data is questionable. However, this is one of the best ways to conduct the surveys when it comes to affordability.  
by Charlie Perschau