Opinion Polls
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Opinion polls are by far one of the most used tools in the areas of politics, advertising, and market research. The use of polls within the context of a political campaign, the Gallup and Harris polls for instance, is the way in which most Americans become familiar with this type of research. Although polls are far from infallible, there is little doubt that their use has some value. As a leading research scholar said, "However partial, misleading or inconclusive polls may be as indicators of public opinion, they are better than anything else we've got" ("The," 1988, p. 1). Polls take on particular significance in Presidential election years, witnessed most recently by the 1988 campaign in which both Vice President George Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis made extensive use of polls as an indicator of public views. Nevertheless, opinion polls have been severely criticized as biased, misleading, and inaccurate. The use of opinion polls as a tool in market research began in the early 1900s. In 1911, the Battle Creek, Michigan based company of Kellogg, along with 50 other national advertisers, initiated a post card survey of magazine readership. This began the science of market research (Boorstin, 1973, p. 153). By the 1930s, the technique of using public opinion polls was being applied to political and social issues. Market researcher Elmo Roper's polls first appeared in Fortune magazine in 1935. That same year George Gallup founded the American Institute of Publ
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erviewers who pose the questions face to face. This allows the respondent to ask if a question is unclear. The personal interview, although certainly the best polling method, is expensive and time consuming. Conversely, however, it may also result in the influence of the interviewer on the interviewee, thus altering the statistical results.
In the 1980s, most interviewing is done via the telephone, since it is both faster and cheaper than face to face interviewing. Professional pollsters comment that telephone polls were once considered suspect because only the upper classes had access to phones. Today, however, home phones are almost universal, and the use of phone polling is more appropriate (Asher, 1988, p. 58).
One alternative to telephone interviews is the self administered mail questionnaire. Mail surveys, like telephone and personal interviews, use printed questionnaires with preprinted responses listed. Unlike telephone surveys though, the written forms must be written so that the questions are clear and concise, since there is no one to explain the questions. Another problem with mail surveys is that not everyone responds, or responds accurately.
Thus, to accurately gauge an appropriate sample of individuals
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2003
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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