Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Reporting on political public opinion polls, and should your newsroom undertake polls of its own?

ASK THIS | March 24, 2004
By Barry Sussman
editor@niemanwatchdog.org

 
Q. The smaller the sample, the less useful the poll. Is the sample large enough?
 
Q. Should your news organization do its own political polls? Why or why not, and how difficult would that be?
 
Q. Where do focus groups fit in? (Answer: Nowhere.)
 
Done properly, opinion polls are marvelous contributions to understanding politics. But too often they're not done properly.
 
Chances are there will be more news media opinion polls and focus groups in 2004 than in any previous election season. That would be fine if these tools were used intelligently. But for the most part, they won't be. So here's a primer.  continue...

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