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51 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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1. What are the two most critical factors in making public opinion polls scientific?
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a. Carefully selectd sample of respondants
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2. The surveys sent out by magazines to their subscribers have two significant self-selection problems. These problems are also true for polls conducted on Internet web pages (e.g., MSNBC, CNN, FOX, etc). What are they?
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a. The reader and subscribers to a particular magazine many not be representative of the broader population of which they are members. The people who actually complete the questionnaires many not be representative of the magazine’s total readers and subscribers
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3. When organizations pretend to be conducting a poll in order to raise money, it is referred to as______.
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Frugging
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4. Some organizations send mailers to their members that include “polls.” The author points out that the results of such polls are unreliable because members – and those who complete the polls -- are often unrepresentative of the population. What other flaw does the author highlight in these kinds of “polls”?
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a. Questions are poorly formulated and flawed.
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5. What is a push poll?
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a. A campaign contacts a large number of voters under the guise of conducting a public opinion poll, presents some negative information about another candidates, and then ask some questions about that candidate. Push polls are designed to… push potential voters away from a particular candidate
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6. Push polls are designed to…
A. shape opinion, not estimate it. B. shape opinion and then estimate it C. estimate public opinion D. estimate public opinion and then shape it E. none of the above |
A. shape opinion, not estimate it.
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7. The author argues that some administrations conduct public opinion polling for a purpose other than shaping actual policy. How do they use the results?
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a. Use poll results to manipulate promote an agenda to prove the public supports their position
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1. What don’t more surveys include the mushiness index?
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A. Because it is too costly and time-consuming to ask all the questions needed to construct it
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2. Based on research by Zaller and Feldman (1992), what is the best way for pollsters to understand the opinions of the public on complex issues?
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A. Citizens do not have highly specific, fixed attitudes about many topics. Instead, people often have mixed multip and sometimes conflicting opinions on issues. People respond to survey questions based on what is on their minds at the time of the suvey. Complex topics should always be asssessed using multip survey items.
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3. What was unusual about the responses to a public opinion poll asking about the 1975 Public Affairs Act?
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A. Even though the act was nonexistent, people were still giving opinions about the act
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4. How did partisans determine whether they supported the 1975 Public Affairs Act?
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A. IF the poll included President Clinton wanted to repeal the act, the democrats were more likely to be in favor of the repeal. When the question included the republicans in congress in favor of the repeal. Respondents were seeking cues and guidance from the wording of the question itself
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5. Which of the following is NOT something pollsters ask about to generate the Mushiness Index?
A. How much the issue affects the respondent. B. Whether the respondent voted in the last midterm election. C. How informed the respondent feels about the issue. D. How often the respondent discusses the issue with friends and family. E. Whether the respondent’s views are likely to change. |
B. Whether the respondent voted in the last midterm election.
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6. What is a screening question?
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A. A question asked to separate likely attitude holders from non-attitude respondents. For example asking a question like “do you have an opinion on this or not?”
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1. Question-order effects have a reduced impact on ____-______ surveys?
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self- administered
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2. Differently worded questions that ask about a respondent’s age…
A. yield substantially the same data. B. do not yield substantially the same data. C. yield substantially the same data despite having different refusal rates D. do not yield substantially the same data because they have different refusal rates E. do not yield substantially the same date and do not have different refusal rates |
C. yield substantially the same data despite having different refusal rates
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3. A survey question that asks self-identified independents whether they “lean” towards one of the major political parties is an example of a ____________ question.
A. push B. branching C. unlabelled D. loaded E. declarative |
B. branching
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4. Simple additive indexes work best when
A. they include more than three questions B. they use a check all format. C. the directionality of the questions is consistent. D. the directionality of the questions is random. E. the questions that make up the index ask about the same basic phenomenon. |
E. the questions that make up the index ask about the same basic phenomenon.
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1. What is snowball sampling?
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a. A procedure that often generates important information and insights. For example, you select a respondent and ask him or her from whom they got information, Then one would go to the people named by the first respondent and ask them from whom they got information. This process would be repeated over and over, and the sample would soon snowball.
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2. What preconditions must be met in order to use systematic sampling?
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a. The list of names should have no cycle or periodicity to it. The researcher picks every nth name from the list, after picking the first name at random
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3. What is the advantage of using a stratification sample?
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a. The major advantage of stratified sampling are a reduction in sampling error and a guarentee of representativeness with respect to the variables used ins tratifying
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4. Why does number portability present a problem for public opinion polls?
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a. It becomes difficult to use random-digit dialing to contact households in specific geographic areas
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5. What happens to the confidence interval of a public opinion survey when examining the results of a subset of a sample? Why?
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a. As the origiinal sample is subdivided into smaller and smaller subsets, the confidence interval increases
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6. What was different about the non-response rates in the periods between 1979-1996 and 1996-2003?
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a. They found that the decline in response rates was greater between 1996 and 2003 than it was between 1979 and 1996. The increase since 1996 was primarily due to a greater rate of refusals. The growth in nonresponses in the pre-1996 period was mainly due to the inability to contact respondents.
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2. What does Asher mean by the “validity” of a survey question?
A. The extent to which question-order effects have been reduced or eliminated. B. The extent to which question-wording effects have been reduced or eliminated. C. The extent to which a question seeks to shape (invalid) or estimate (valid) public opinion. D. The extent to which the question measures what it claims to measure. E. The amount of pre-testing done prior to a questions inclusion in a survey. |
D. The extent to which the question measures what it claims to measure.
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4. Which of the following is a disadvantage of doing telephone surveys that use prerecorded voices.
A. Recorded voices illicit fewer emotional responses. B. Recorded voices illicit more emotional responses. C. There is less variation in the manner in which questions are answered D. Pollsters exert less control over selecting respondents. E. They are less expensive to administer. |
D. Pollsters exert less control over selecting respondents.
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5. What is the most significant problem with Internet polling?
A. Individuals without broadband are less likely to participate. B. They tend to oversample urban areas. C. Democrats are more likely to respond than Republicans D. Republicans are more likely to respond than Democrats. E. Respondents are self-selected. |
E. Respondents are self-selected.
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1. How do the authors define public opinion?
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A. Public opinion is the aggregate of the views of individual adults on matters of public interests
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2. According to critics like Blumer, public opinion is not best reflected in the summation aggregation of individual opinions. From this perspective, how is public opinion more accurately reflected?
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A. Public opinion was more accurately reflected in the views of the relatively small group of influential in the community, who paid more attention to and were more knowledgeable about matters of public affairs.
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4. Public Opinion is more effective at ____________ than ______________.
A. Preventing the adoption of objectionable policies, imposing policies on lawmakers. B. Imposing policies on lawmakers, preventing the adoption of objectionable policies. C. Shaping foreign policy, domestic policy D. Shaping domestic policy, economic policy. E. Representing the views of the elite, examining political donations. |
A. Preventing the adoption of objectionable policies, imposing policies on lawmakers.
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5. Which is most likely to be stable (i.e., unchanging), public opinion or public judgment?
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A. Public judgement
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6. What is an attitude?
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A. Relatively enduring orientations toward object that provide individuals with mental frameworks for making economical sense of the world
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7. What is an opinion?
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A. The verbal expression of attitudes
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1. From what sources, other than subscribers, did the Literary Digest select respondents for its straw poll before the 1936 presidential election?
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A. Telephone directories and automible registration lists
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2. Which group was under-represented in the 1936 Literary Digest straw poll?
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A. Low income people that did not have car or telephone
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3. Why was the exclusion of the group mentioned in Question 2 significant?
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A. This group was more likely to vote for Roosevelt. There was a bias in the sampling frame.
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4. Which groups tend to be over-represented when using quota samples?
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A. Higher and Middle-income respondents
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5. Which of the following is NOT a factor contributing to the increased accuracy of public opinion polls in the period between 1952-2004?
A. The use of modified area samples. B. Reducing the number of questions in each poll. C. Conducting interviews closer to the election. D. An increased capacity to identify potential voters. E. An increased capacity to predict how people who are undecided will vote. |
B. Reducing the number of questions in each poll.
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6. Why, from the perspective of public opinion researchers, was the situation in the 1990s similar to the situation facing researchers in the 1950s?
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A. Households with internet access might not include low-income households or older people, or people with less formal education. The sample was underrepresented.
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7. A ____ ____ _______ is a type of sampling that uses geographical areas (e.g., census tracts) as sampling units.
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modified area sample
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1. The authors refer to polls designed to change – rather than estimate – public opinion as…
A. Benchmark polls B. Tracking polls C. Push polls D. Attack ad polls. E. Negative message testing polls. |
C. Push polls
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2. According to the authors, by the time of the Carter administration, the use of public opinion polls had become an enduring characteristic of the modern presidency. The authors refer to this change as the __________ of public opinion.
A. institutionalization B. regularized manipulation C. standardization D. normalization E. politicization |
A. institutionalization
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3. White House polling operations are…
A. included as a line item in the executive branch budget. B. included as a line item in the White House budget. C. funded by political contributions. D. funded by hard money donations. E. provided pro bono by political operatives. |
C. funded by political contributions.
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4. Some of the largest data collection efforts are conducted by the …
A. Department of the Interior B. Department of Health and Human Services. C. White House. D. Census Bureau. E. the Congressional Budget Office. |
D. Census Bureau.
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1. What is the first step that must be completed when using random-digit dialing (RDD)?
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A. All of the working telephone exchange in the area in which the population of interest resides have to be identified.
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2. To reduce the size of the sampling error in a public opinion survey, pollsters can…
A. screen respondents, eliminating those who do not appear to have real attitudes. B. provide respondents with information about a topic before asking any questions. C. increase the number of questions of a specific topic. D. increase the size of the sample. E. utilize a “mushiness” index. |
D. increase the size of the sample.
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3. What is a closed-ended question?
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A. Respondents select their answer from a list provided
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4. What is an open-ended question?
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A. Responents provide their own answers to the question
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5. What is a “filter” question?
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A. A qeustion that is frequently included as part of opinion items in order to limit responses to some subset of the sample, such as those who have an interest in an issue
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6. What is a primacy effect?
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A. A condition in which the alternative that is given to the respondent first is selected more often, simply because it is presented first
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7. What is a recency effect?
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A. A condition in which the alternative that is given to the respondent last is selected more often, simply because it is presented last.
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8. Which of the following modes of surveying tends to produce the highest response rates?
A. Face to face surveys B. Telephone surveys C. Mail-in surveys. D. “Snowball” surveys. E. Forced choice questions. |
A. Face to face surveys
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