Updating an Opinion Poll

A Public Opinion Poll Building Exercise

Background

In a democracy based on "The consent of the governed," assessing the wishes of the public is crucial. The use of scientific public opinion polls has become a major way by which political decision makers assess public desires. In the simulation, students will take a public opinion poll in which you will assess your own opinions on current issues, then later take opinion polls on the Internet and analyze them.   Students will also get an opportunity to take an actual poll from the 1992 and then use the information gained from the Internet resources to update the poll in the simulation.  Younger students will especially benefit by placing themselves back in the 1992 elections, gaining more of a perspective on the 1998 elections and the upcoming Year 2000 elections.

Professional polling companies are continuously building upon polls they conduct to develop new polls.  This gives them a chance to refine their polling technique and gives them longitudinal data from which to compare current data.  Pollsters must strike a balance between modifying questions to improve polls and to keep polling questions consistent over time in order to enhance comparability of data over time.  With the upcoming Year 2000 election, and the dramatic political events of 1998 - students will gain from this exercise more of a perspective on the issues of the turn of the century.

 

Procedure
SIMULATING 1992

Students should first take the poll without benefit of research, to get a before and after comparison of their responses.  They should then go to their library to look up articles and political ads from the 1992 Presidential and Congressional campaigns, using the New York Times Index and local newspaper indexes.  Time could be set aside during class periods to help recreate the period as the simulation exercise progresses.  At a pre-set time students will retake the poll and compare previous results.

THE POLL QUESTIONS

 The poll will contain two types of questions:

  1. Demographic questions, which can be used to analyze the poll responses of the class. The instructor will ask students to add to previous responses to be put in a class file within the simulation.
  2. Questions on issues, which can be based on standard questions from national public opinion polls.


 CLASS FILES

  1. Some instructors may wish to compile a class file so that the responses of each class member may be added to the file. The responses in the class files will be saved as class totals, not as individual records. Therefore, if students submit responses for a class file, they must do so only once, even if they take the poll more than once.
  2. Before students take the public opinion poll, they will receive instructions on how to submit responses for the class file.


 AFTER THE POLL

 After students take the public opinion poll, they will choose among the following options:

  1. Take a tutorial on factors to consider when evaluating public opinion polls.
  2. Compare responses with those from national samples and analyze relationships between responses (if responses were added to the class file).
CREATION OF NEW POLL
  1. After studying the 1992 poll and polling resources on the Internet, students can form teams to redesign the poll to fit in with relevance of the timeline of when the the class is being taught
  2. Students should be mindful of keeping new data comparable to old when redesigning the poll.
  3. Some questions may be added or deleted to make the poll more relevant to current events.
  4. Classmates would then be randomly selected to take surveys back to adult family members to take and then place results in sealed envelopes to be later tallied by other classmates
  5. Results would then be tallied and reviewed. 


Go to written assignment
 

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