A Journalist's Guide to Public Opinion Polls

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This straightforward text provides journalists, both professional and student, with an explanation of the realities of an increasingly important facet of today's precision journalism--public opinion polling. The work aims to provide the skills necessary for evaluating and interpreting survey results accurately. After a brief review of the historical relationship between the press and public opinion, the authors examine the polling environment today. Then, step-by-step, they take the reader through the basics of journalistic uses of public opinion surveys and the questions to be asked by the journalist in evaluating a survey: who did the poll; who sponsored the poll; what were the survey questions and how were they worded; what is the sampling error; how to report poll results; how to put survey figures in context; and how to make and evaluate projections based upon polls. In addition, the text offers a review of statistical methods for the journalist and a 20 question checklist.

Reviews

Journalism schools still do not do a very good job of teaching undergraduates about the science of polling, and journalists who went to school ten or twenty years ago certainly did not think they would ever have to know much about sampling error, question-order bias, or response rates. They were wrong....This book is meant for the many working journalists who find themselves faced with an ever-increasing flow of polls and the desire to do a good job of evaluating them for their audiences....The next time you see your local news anchors report on an unscientific poll as if it were not, instead of throwing whatever's handy at the TV screen, buy and send them a copy of this book. Who knows, they might even read and use it.-Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
"Journalism schools still do not do a very good job of teaching undergraduates about the science of polling, and journalists who went to school ten or twenty years ago certainly did not think they would ever have to know much about sampling error, question-order bias, or response rates. They were wrong....This book is meant for the many working journalists who find themselves faced with an ever-increasing flow of polls and the desire to do a good job of evaluating them for their audiences....The next time you see your local news anchors report on an unscientific poll as if it were not, instead of throwing whatever's handy at the TV screen, buy and send them a copy of this book. Who knows, they might even read and use it."-Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Author Bio

SHELDON R. GAWISER is senior poll analyst for NBC News and president of the National Council on Public Polls. He is president of Gawiser Associates, Inc. of Fairfield, Connecticut, consultants in information collection and management. G. EVANS WITT is assistant bureau chief of the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. He previously served as director of AP/NBC News polling.