A Facebook friend who
lives in Florida
recently posted about a polling call that his wife answered. The interviewer asked if she planned to vote
for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.
When she said no, the interviewer said they hoped she would change her
mind and ended the call.
I commented on my friend’s
post that this did not sound like a legitimate poll. It was really a canvassing call. A real poll would not ask a leading question. Where I work, we even go so far as to rotate
the names of the candidates in a race so that half of the respondents hear the
name of the Democratic candidate first, and half of the respondents hear the
name of the Republican candidate first.
That is one way that we work to reduce bias in polling.
Respondents often ask our
interviewers who is sponsoring a survey.
When we conduct political polls we often do not tell the interviewers
the name of the client. We tell them to
tell respondents that interviewers are intentionally not told who is sponsoring
a survey, so as not to bias or influence anyone’s answers. We have done several polls for the Columbus
Dispatch. At the end of the call we ask
respondents if a reporter from the Dispatch may call them to discuss their
answers. When we do these polls, we tell
interviewers to tell respondents who is sponsoring the survey after they have
completed the survey.
When I brief interviewers
on a new telephone survey project I like to remind them that they are free to
have opinions about candidates and issues, but to keep those opinions to
themselves when interviewing respondents.
If an interviewer asks:
“If the election were held
today, who would you vote for President of the United States, Barack Obama, the
Democrat, or Mitt Romney, the Republican?”
OR
“If the election were held
today, who would you vote for President of the United States, Mitt Romney, the
Republican, or Barack Obama, the Democrat?”
The interviewer should not
emphasize either choice. If the
interviewer asks a respondent if they agree or disagree with a political
position, the interviewer needs to read the question in such a way that the
respondent cannot tell if the interviewer agrees or disagrees with the
position. We occasionally have
respondents ask interviewers how they feel about issues. They are permitted to discuss their opinions
only after the respondent has answered all of the survey questions, and then to
keep it brief. We remind interviewers
not to say okay or uh-huh after a respondent answers a question. These utterances can be interpreted as approval
or disapproval of answers to questions.
As far as I know, CBS
News, Gallup, Quinnipiac University
and Rasmussen train their pollsters in maintaining neutrality. These organizations have
an interest in making sure that the data they collect is accurate. The larger the phone room, the more difficult
it may be to make sure that each interviewer is asking questions in a neutral
manner. Errors in sampling may also skew
polling results slightly. That is why a
margin of error is always reported with survey results. For the most part, however, polling
organizations have neither a Democratic nor a Republican agenda.
John C. Stevens
Saperstein Associates
(614) 261-0065
