StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Independent topic - Speech or Presentation Example

Cite this document
Summary
Before you get to know the key statistical components to doing a professional poll you will at first need to understand that the original purpose of conducting such polls is to magnify the voice of the public with regards to certain issues. This means that the ultimate goal is…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.7% of users find it useful
Independent topic
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Independent topic"

Before you get to know the key statistical components to doing a professional poll you will at first need to understand that the original purpose of conducting such polls is to magnify the voice of the public with regards to certain issues. This means that the ultimate goal is that the same public must have confidence in the results obtained from such polls. To maintain public confidence, therefore, the following four broad statistical components are very important: the sample, the method of interviewing, the questions and method of interpreting results.

In professional polling the importance of sampling validity is immeasurable. The first step is to fully identify the sampling frame from the population that the poll seeks to represent. This is followed by a random selection of a small percentage from within the sampling frame to represent the entire population targeted by that poll. Random here implies that everyone has an equal chance to be selected and this can only be achieved if the method chosen to identify individuals to be interviewed is free of bias.

Even though Statistics postulates that the actual number of people interviewed for a given sample is less important than the soundness of ‘randomness’ employed in the process, you still need to balance the economic cost of sample sizes with the desired level of accuracy required. Accuracy of plus or minus three percentage points margin of error is the acceptable level for professional polls.Once the individual to be interviewed has been identified it is important not to change the selected person so as to eliminate possibility of bias.

In the case of telephone sampling this would involve performing call-backs until such a time that selected individual is available. However, more importantly for the interview is the wording of the questions and the order in which they are set to be answered. Crafting fair and objective questions requires extensive knowledge of public opinion, care and discipline. To achieve this it is good practice to have exact wording of a question held constant from year to year to analyze trends and also to have multiple questions to help put the research within a certain context.

These two practices come in handy when interpreting the poll results. Finally, for accountability purposes the polling company needs to make its data available to the public domain for any interested parties to draw their own conclusions about what the survey data means and to assess whether the poll was conducted in a professional manner.The New York Times poll on the proposed immigration law used a sample size of 1,079 adults which statistically would give us the acceptable margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The New York Times tells us that respondents were selected randomly from the adults within households that were selected from a list that exceeded 69,000 active residential exchanges across the United States (para 2), that included listed and unlisted numbers (para 3) and was supplemented by cell phone numbers (para 4). It is clear that the pollsters took great effort in seeking to maintain a random sampling technique. We are also informed how they sought to ensure regional representation of their target population in the survey through the selection of the residential exchanges used.

We therefore find the technique used to come up with the respondents to be in tandem with the industry standards. We also find the sample size of more than 1,000 to be appropriate because it gives us a margin of error that is appropriate for such surveys.However, we are not able to give a complete critical analysis of the poll with regards to the interviewing technique, wording of the questions and question order because we are not provided with that information. This would be vital for the critique because question wording and ordering are great sources of bias and error in surveys nowadays.

Therefore, we cannot unequivocally give the New York Times poll a clean bill of health.Works Cited“How the Poll Was Conducted”. The New York Times. 3 May 2010. Web. 16 May 2010.

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Independent topic Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1567003-independent-topic
(Independent Topic Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words)
https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1567003-independent-topic.
“Independent Topic Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1567003-independent-topic.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Independent topic

Air Pollution and Population in Kuwait

hellip; The topic that is being discussed statistically in this paper is ‘Air pollution and population in Kuwait.... In the present days where climate control is an important topic of study, it is important to study the topic of air pollution, which is in a way directly related to climate control.... Can pollution be treated as an independent variable apart from population?...
9 Pages (2250 words) Research Paper

Economics - Dependent and Independent Variables

While carrying out research on chosen topic with questionnaire as data collection instruments, it would be advisable to obtain information on the participants' background as well as general information such as gender and age (Leedy and Ormrod, 2010).... Such questions should be directly linked to the subject or topic of research.... In this case, the employed case studies will provide additional information on the topic of research (Leedy and Ormrod, 2010)....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Aid Knowledge Development

It identifies the existence of a reference topic from which the investigations are made.... hellip; The author states that the effects of drug abuse on domestic violence' are my first topic of interest.... The topic's independent variable is the consumption of drugs and is measurable on two scales, consumption, or non-consumption of drugs, and participants' level of consumption of drugs.... 'Factors affecting the relationship between cognitive development among children and their social environment' is another research topic, in sociology, that I can explore through qualitative research....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Understanding Philosophy from the Various Philosophical Topics

This explains that we can have knowledge independent of sense experience.... In addition, it adopts the innate knowledge thesis that explains the acquisition of additional knowledge independent of experience.... This assignment "Understanding Philosophy from the Various Philosophical Topics" analyses philosophical topics like religion, ethics, logic, epistemology, metaphysics....
4 Pages (1000 words) Assignment

Email Pragmatics: Language in Email Communication

This report talks that language is an important part of humanity as it serves several purposes.... In both the social and academic context, language remains an important phenomenon that cannot be disregarded if social and academic interactions can be complete.... hellip; This essay will select language in email communication as a case study or typical scenario of pragmatics and stress on ways in which conventions that have to do with the use of pragmatics are often flouted in email communication....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Merits and Drawbacks of Central Bank Independence

hellip; The topic of central bank independence is current and highly significant thus the need to focus on it in academia.... This paper discusses focuses on the independence of central bank and discusses the merits and drawbacks that are associated with an independent central bank.... This paper discusses focuses on the independence of central bank and discusses the merits and drawbacks that are associated with an independent central bank....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Strategies for Direct and Indirect Instruction

he structured lessons prepared must ensure a clear approach towards the topic, a sequential approach, and activities and lesson pacing in control of the teacher.... The aim of this study is to design a lesson plan for the 3rd-grade earth science class, the plant unit.... The study firstly provides a brief summary of the students' educational background....
5 Pages (1250 words) Case Study

Independent Learning as a Concept

Based on self for thinking definition, Bishop (2006, p 44) noted that, teachers guide students in learning and students have to explore further to discover the topic under study for themselves.... … The paper "independent Learning" is a wonderful example of a literature review on education.... independent learning is a concept that has existed for many years; however, there is no succinct definition of the concept (Broad 2006, p.... There are different terms used to define independent learning....
6 Pages (1500 words) Literature review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us