Mass Communication Research Finding News and Poll Data

This module is designed to help you develop skills for:

• Using the Web to find news stories and news releases that are based on survey research data.
• Using the Web to find technical reports and data from survey research that serve as the basis for news.
• Understanding how communication professionals use survey data to write news.
• Evaluating news reports with a particular emphasis on standards developed by pollsters.

Like most news releases, this one has the following attributes:

• It was written in the form of a news story.
• It was written by an employee of an organization who primary mission is not news.
• It was made available to news media in hopes that they would publish all or part of it.

In contrast to a news release, a news story is written by an employee of a news organization in print, broadcasting, or Internet. For an example of a news story, click here. Presumably a press release is designed to promote the point of view of the organization that produced it, while a news story reflects journalistic judgment about how to attract and inform an audience. We'll see news stories below.

Now, look at a annotated questionnaire that describes the the data used for the press release.

The key attributes of this are:

• It reports the exact questions from the survey used to generate data.
• It reports the frequencies of various responses to those questions.

Before taking on the task of evaluating and writing about polls, you need to learn a more about them.

Public Agenda Online provides advice on interpreting polls.

• 20 Questions Journalists Ask About Poll Results is an easily navigated Web page.
• Best Estimate: A Guide to Sample Size and Sampling Error.

Associations of pollsters also provide advice on dealing with polls and have promulgated governing their members.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research, (AAPOR) is an individual organization from academic and private research organizations that is concerned with promoting quality public opinion research and public understanding of it. It has promulgated the AAPOR Code of Professional Ethics and Practices.

Also, you should look at a document called AAPOR Best Practices.

For a general discussion of the AAPOR Standards of Disclosure, see a Web Note by M. Mark Miller.

The National Council on Public Polls, (NCCP), an association of polling organizations, has promulgated standards similar to those established by AAPOR. These are the NCPP Principles of Disclosure.

NCCP also provides a document 20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results on a easily navigated Web page.

Best Sources

These sources provide full stories or releases along with detailed technical reports.

Los Angeles Times Polls Index Summarizes polls back to 1996 conducted on the national, state or local level in California. The StatSheet for polls "contains the exact question wording and sequence, the numerical results for each question (including some demographic cross-tabulations), any trend data that exist for particular questions, and a description of the survey methodology." (StatSheets are in pdf format.) Strong focus on California political, social, and economic issues — a very comprehensive and useful site.

Washington Post Poll Vault Contains the results of Post polls conducted over the past two years. Most represent nationwide samples on national issues, but some are on topics of regional interest; for example, a survey of Washington-area teachers on education standards or public perception of urban sprawl in Maryland. A brief article summarizes each poll. For most, question responses are broken down by demographic variables (such as geographic region, age, sex, political affiliation), with links to previous polls with similar questions. A nice feature is the ability to search for questions by category and keyword from polls conducted during the previous year. However, the resulting links sometimes don't work — don't rely on it entirely, but it supplements browsing the entire list.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press An "independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward press, politics and public policy issues." Contains summaries of results, comparisons of how attitudes change over time, copies of questionnaires, and descriptions of survey methodologies. Some surveys are accompanied by tables with responses broken down by sex, race, age, religion, income, and geographic region. An excellent resource.

Other Good Sources

These sources provide news releases that usually include some questions and their frequencies.

The Gallup Organization has recent political and economic polling results, as well as "special reports" that examine attitudes toward social issues and consumer behavior. Some multinational studies are included. (Olin Library owns the printed Gallup Poll Monthly.)

Public Agenda A nonpartisan opinion research organization that reports surveys conducted by national firms on public policy issues. Especially strong coverage of quality of life and social issues; for example, race, health care, privacy, drug abuse, crime, the environment, and immigration. Lots of eye-catching graphs and tables, and topic-specific pages contain cautionary notes about question wordings, the timing of the featured polls, and the margins of error. A swell site.

Wirthlin Worldwide Archives contains extensive survey reports in PDF format.

Good Clues

Sources that provide poll questions and response frequences but not full reports. Often the full reports can be located by using search engines the Lexis/Nexis news data base. See using search engines below

Polling Report Publishes results of selected questions derived from surveys conducted by major polling organizations. You can search for specific topics or browse under broad categories (Politics and Policy, Business/Economy, American Scene, National Barometer). Information on the original survey, sample size, and frequencies accompanies each question. Find out popular opinions on elected officials at the national and state levels, consumer attitudes on economic conditions, and how people view a variety of leisure activities (such as America's "favorite college football team").

LEXIS/NEXIS Universe The Public Opinion Location Library (POLL) includes survey questions back to 1936. Although the database is compiled by the Roper Center, it contains questions from other U.S. organizations such as Harris, Gallup, National Opinion Research Center, and major news establishments. The survey questions you locate include responses, which are occasionally broken down by respondents' demographics. From the Universe home page, select Reference to search general reference sources, then select Polls & Surveys. This page allows considerable flexibility for tailoring your query. You can search for terms in the text of the document or at the question level, limit by the size and composition of the population surveyed, and search for specific polling sponsors or organization.

The Pulse A Consumers Guide to Public Opinion Data on the Web.

Using Search Engines

Probably your first impulse for searching out anything on the Web is to use a search engine such as Google or Altavista. The problem with this is that simple search strings such as "poll" or "survey" will yield a lot of junk.

Of course, you can use more sophisticated search strategies to narrow your search and get better results. If you know a lot about the materials you want to find and their sources and can develop good search strategies, search engines work well.

LEXIS/NEXIS Universe has a news area that lets you search for full text from a number of newspapers and magazines. Sometimes you can locate poll reports by using information you gather using sources like those listed in "Good Clues" above.

If you know the source that provided the report, the subject, and the date that a poll was conducted, you can use this information to do an efficient search.

Of course, the same kinds of strategies work with standard search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

UT Libraries provide an extensive list of search engines, subject indexes, web crawlers, etc.

University Library Link Collections

Here an excellent set of link collections that provide other places to look.

Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research Sites listed here contain the complete text of opinion polls or surveys. The inclusiveness of these sites varies. Some can locate a question on a specific topic or contain an entire survey or questionnaire. Others include response cross tabulations and information on a survey's methodology. Sources that only summarize survey results are not included, nor are sites that concentrate on survey methodology.

Richter Libary Poll Data at the University of Miami has a good collection of links to poll data on the web.

Yale University Archive of polls and survey data sets. Includes information on printed indexes, online indexes, and web sites to surveys and polling organizations. Maintained by Yale's Social Sciences Libraries.

If you don't understand something in this Web note, please e-mail Dr. Sitton.