Lesson 3 The Measurement Of Public Opinion Quizlet

Leo Migdal

-Nov 26, 2025, 3:09 PM

lesson 3 the measurement of public opinion quizlet

Chapter 6: The Politics of Public Opinion By the end of this section, you will be able to: Polling has changed over the years. The first opinion poll was taken in 1824; it asked voters how they voted as they left their polling places. Informal polls are called straw polls, and they informally collect opinions of a non-random population or group. Newspapers and social media continue the tradition of unofficial polls, mainly because interested readers want to know how elections will end.

Facebook and online newspapers often offer informal, pop-up quizzes that ask a single question about politics or an event. The poll is not meant to be formal, but it provides a general idea of what the readership thinks. Modern public opinion polling is relatively new, only eighty years old. These polls are far more sophisticated than straw polls and are carefully designed to probe what we think, want, and value. The information they gather may be relayed to politicians or newspapers, and is analyzed by statisticians and social scientists. As the media and politicians pay more attention to the polls, an increasing number are put in the field every week.

Most public opinion polls aim to be accurate, but this is not an easy task. Political polling is a science. From design to implementation, polls are complex and require careful planning and care. Mitt Romney’s campaign polls are only a recent example of problems stemming from polling methods. Our history is littered with examples of polling companies producing results that incorrectly predicted public opinion due to poor survey design or bad polling methods. By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Earlier in this chapter, we discussed how writing to public officials is an important facet of political participation. Before we had a good way to measure public opinion, constituent letters were one of the few ways officials could gauge how the public felt. The advent of public opinion polls provided a scientific way of identifying and measuring opinions. Social scientist Jean Converse, in her history of the field, writes that surveys can be traced back 2,000 years but were forged in the 20th century as a way to understand mass populations and... A sample is a group selected by a researcher to represent the characteristics of the entire population, and because we can never poll the entire population, getting the right sample is important to the... But how can we accurately gauge the opinions of the whole country on a sample of 1,400 or 2,000 people?

The way the sample is drawn affects its accuracy. In the most common method, probability sampling, researchers randomly choose samples from the larger population. This method requires that everyone has an equal chance of being part of the sample and that they are randomly selected, which allows researchers to make generalizations about the larger population. If a researcher chooses people at random from a population, it is likely that their views will match the opinions of the larger population as a whole. These types of samples are often generated through random digit dialing, in which respondents are chosen at random by a computerized phone number generator. Researchers then use these randomly generated phone numbers to reach people at home and ask them about their opinions.

While random digit dialing has been the go-to for decades, the decrease in landlines, increased adoption of cell phones, and increased time that people are at work have all contributed to the decreased reliance... A Los Angeles Times article found that Internet-based surveys and automated interviewing systems (as opposed to live pollsters) were particularly accurate and may reflect a shift in how researchers measure public opinion moving forward.128 The difficulty of reaching people for polls is not just an American phenomenon. Researchers in Japan have found steep decreases in responses to nationally conducted surveys, with the steepest declines in metropolitan areas and among younger demographics. Scholars point to increased commute times, longer work hours, and higher mobility among younger Japanese as contributing to this problem.129 Sampling in countries facing violence or instability can be a serious—and dangerous—problem for pollsters. James Bell, director of international survey research for the Pew Research Center, notes that when Pew conducted polls during civil unrest in Ukraine and Venezuela, polls needed to be conducted face-to-face rather than by...

In addition, sometimes the data acquired in polls must be processed locally if pollsters cannot immediately evacuate the area.130 Everyone loves a good public opinion poll. As you’ll see in other chapters, data from polls are utilized throughout society, from the media to candidates running for office, and even to decide what gets included in legislation. However, being able to properly understand what the data are telling us is a skill that is developed and can be utilized in a wide range of areas. If you can look at a set of numerical data or observable facts and reach an informed conclusion about what is happening—for example, about whether a group of voters prefers a certain candidate or... In the modern digital era, we have a wealth of information at our fingertips.

Being able to properly understand and interpret that information is a skill that is becoming fundamental in today’s workforce. There are also “nontraditional” sampling methods, which may be less scientific but offer certain benefits. One nontraditional method is a convenience sample, which, as the name suggests, is a sample based on convenience rather than probability. If you do not have the funds to create a poll based on a probability sample and random digit dialing, you might instead ask your classmates or your coworkers to respond to your survey... While this method is both convenient and easy, we cannot extrapolate much from the information beyond the sample from which it is drawn. Another type of polling method is called cluster sampling, in which researchers divide the overall population into clusters, based on characteristics such as shared cities or schools, then randomly select people from within those...

This type of sampling is cheaper than probability sampling, but the results are also not quite as representative because they are not randomly drawn. By the end of this section, you will be able to: Polling has changed over the years. The first opinion poll was taken in 1824; it asked voters how they voted as they left their polling places. Informal polls are called straw polls, and they informally collect opinions of a non-random population or group. Newspapers and social media continue the tradition of unofficial polls, mainly because interested readers want to know how elections will end.

The magazine sent opinion cards to people who had a subscription, a phone, or a car registration. Only some of the recipients sent back their cards. The result? Alf Landon was predicted to win 55.4 percent of the popular vote; in the end, he received only 38 percent.[1]

Lesson 3 The Measurement Of Public Opinion Quizlet

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