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Will Cellular Phones Skew Survey Results? 312

Posted by timothy from the don't-get-asked-don't-tell dept.
FriedEgg writes "Recently, many people have started to forgo traditional landline telephones in favor of cellular phones only. This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money. While they recognize the exclusion of cellular only users can skew their results, they're not yet sure how much... because they're unable to survey cellular only users to find out their demographic information. Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway. If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
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Will Cellular Phones Skew Survey Results? More

Will Cellular Phones Skew Survey Results?

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  • For Those... (Score:5, Informative)

    by PakProtector ( 115173 ) <cevkiv@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:37AM (#7843891) Journal

    ...Of you who slept through History class, 'Dewey Defeats Truman' refers to the 1948 presidential election in which it was projected a man named Dewey would defeat encumbant president Truman, due to skewed mail-in poll results.

    Link is to Historybuff for more info. Dewey Defeats Truman [historybuff.com]

    • And some pictures... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @06:23AM (#7844005)
      Surprisingly, the parent didn't post any links to the famous picture of the debacle. Well, I guess it turns out there are a few of them.

      Here [uncp.edu] are [studentxpress.ie] three, including a wide shot [trumanlibrary.org] I hadn't seen before..

      W

  • The results are bogus already ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark$ide ( 732508 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:41AM (#7843901) Journal
    Aren't the results of any phone survey skewed already. If someone calls me unsolicited I'll tell them to go away impolitely.

    Haven't the Americans just got a 50 million list of folks who don't want to be called.

    Do the folks who fit those two categories have a common demographic?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Unfortunately, (at least from my point of view), political pollsters are exempt from the "do not call" list, as are charity organizations.
      And for those who made earlier comments about liberal vs. conservatives with cell only access, I know of several political conservatives (30s and 40s) with only cell phones, and numerous luddite liberals with only landlines. I really doubt that political affiliation or leaning has much to do with this, it is more of a comfort level with the technology. Yes, that seems t

    • I would also imagine that much of their calling is conducted during the day. This would seem to exclude people who work during the day, so they might well be missing the employed demographic

      Also, I would imagine that there are a number of people who screen their calls via answering machine and also would thus not answer the phone

    • From http://www.donotcall.gov/ FAQ

      Q: What about telephone surveys?

      A: If the call is really for the sole purpose of conducting a survey, it is not covered. Only telemarketing calls are covered - that is, calls that solicit sales of goods or services. Callers purporting to take a survey, but also offering to sell goods or services, must comply with the National Do Not Call Registry.

  • Caller ID and call screening already do that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WuphonsReach ( 684551 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:43AM (#7843907)
    I would have to say that there is already an effect from the number of people with Caller ID or who screen their calls with answering machines. I know I don't bother picking up if there's no caller info or it says "GALLUP POLL".

    The question for the market research is:

    Does the universe of people who have cell phones correlate to the universe of respondents that I'm trying to reach or does it introduce bias? (I know just enough to get myself in trouble here...)

    e.g. if 55% of your population is A, and 45% is B, and the cellphone population is also 55% A / 45% B, then it will have no impact on the results. OTOH, if the cellphone population is 75% A / 25% B, then there is going to be bias that will have to be corrected for in order to extrapolate back to the main population. (Guaranteed there is some wrong terminology there...)

    • There is already a bias. In a typical poll, about 1000 people are contacted. Here is an example [washingtonpost.com]. Note that an accuracy of 3% is quoted, for such a small sample. What are the odds that calling randomly people, you will find at home young or active persons ? Pretty small. And now, from the article, we learn that:

      "A recent Sprint Wireless survey of more than 500 college students found that half are cell-only customers"

      Oops, the odds of the pollsters to have 18-24 year old in their sample have just been

      • The 3% figure quoted in this, and similar polls, is sampling error. That's the margin of error that can be attributed to a limited sample size. It does not include any errors generated by how the sample was selected. Sampling error is useful if you are doing things like testing parts on an assembly line, where every part is identical. When you are dealing with people, it can be misleading. It should be interpreted as a lower bound on the total error, that even if the poll is perfectly designed and conducted

      • What are the odds that calling randomly people, you will find at home young or active persons ?

        I worked in the market research industry for a (very) short time. In order to get a proper cross-section of the population, we were given a number of people from each from each population group that we had to reach. (75 men Age over 50, 100 men Aged 35-49, 75 women Age over 50 etc...) Without getting into too much detail about the market research industry, all surveys begin with a set of qualification questions

      • A recent Sprint Wireless survey of more than 500 college students found that half are cell-only customers

        What? I don't understand. I thought you couldn't survey cell-only people. My slashdot has betrayed me.

        Perhaps, this survey actually sent people out into the street to survey people. Perhaps the political polsters just need to change their methods (as i'm sure they will) rather than admit defeat to sampling error.

        Of course, people on the street introduces biases also. Maybe the reason the perc

    • I don't understand this position (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GregWebb ( 26123 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @07:57AM (#7844248)
      I _want_ the world to reflect my tastes. I want companies to introduce products that match what I want, I want my favourite TV programs to get more airtime, I want my political positions to be listened to and regarded as significant.

      Opinion polls are an excellent way to do this. I've not been invited to participate in any number by phone but have several by e-mail or banner ads. Unless it's simply not possible for me to participate for some reason, I _will_ complete the poll. Yes, it's a small contribution but it's another point in their dataset and it corresponds to _me_ and helps drag data towards me just a little.

      I won't participate in loyalty card schemes because I don't like the data density they're building up and don't think many shoppers appreciate quite how much data is being stored on exactly what they do and what can be done with it. Polls are rather different though - it's upgront about what's being gathered and due to the different nature of the data, has rather less nefarious possibilities for data mining. Net result I'm absolutely fine with giving them data to help swing towards me. After all, if I've got the chance to help steer the world towards what I want and I _can_ take it, why shouldn't I?
      • I have participated in two extended telephone polls, both about computers. I participated because for computer polls, I am as interested in divining "who paid for the poll" as they are in my answers, so it worked out. I was also curious how extensive such polls were. Thus, there was a mutual interest. (However, my curiousity has been satisfied and I don't think I'd do it again.)

        I was able to figure out who paid for both polls. I don't remember one of them, but the other was paid for by Microsoft to researc
        • Ahh, note this is more signing up for polls that way then responding based on invitations. It's difficult to know the size of their sample sets precisely but I've certainly been asked detailed product planning questions before, or detailed political opinion polls. They sure as heck aren't just being dumped to a marketing database by the 10,000.

          Anyway, most of the time it's not traceable to anything more than my area and rough demographic, and any influence is better than none. I'm happy with my side of the

  • Won't matter much for elections (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:44AM (#7843910)
    The 18-24 demographic is the one least likely to vote anyway

  • is it *so* hard to take a hint? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tuxette ( 731067 ) * <tuxette&gmail,com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:45AM (#7843915) Homepage Journal
    People don't want to be called and pestered by pollsters. The only people that don't seem to understand are the pollsters.

    Some excerpts from the first article:

    In an unscientific poll last month by CNN and Money magazine, 41 percent of more than 11,000 voluntary participants said they would be inclined to pull the plug on their land lines and go entirely wireless.

    Unfortunately no reason is stated, but I have a feeling that "so these stupid pollsters don't call and pester me" is one of the leading reasons.

    A recent Sprint Wireless survey of more than 500 college students found that half are cell-only customers.

    No kidding, Sherlock. Think about it. Students are always on the move, changing addresses frequently. It is MUCH easier to have a cell phone only than to deal with changing land lines every 6 months.Students are also the demographic group with too many other things to do and think about than answer some stupid survey.

    "That makes it an opt-in situation where the cellphone user somehow signs up to allow researchers to call," she said. "Who's going to do that?"

    Like....DUUUUUUH! Get a clue already! YOU'RE UNWANTED!

    • > Students are also the demographic group with too many other things to do and think about than answer some stupid survey.

      really? too many things to do and think about?

      ah yeah, 'must score pot'...'must get laid'....'should write term paper'....'must switch TV on'
    • Even the article is hip to your point.

      "The public is growing less willing to participate in surveys, industry leaders say. "

      I feel like I'm constantly being bugged. Phone surveys, commercials (even before movies, now that really pisses me off!), and spam are 3 areas that jump to mind.
      Fortunately there are ways to deal with each. When I read the article, my thought is "Too bad. I never asked you to call me".
      The article talked about going back to door-to-door polls. That will cost them more money and it mak

    • but I have a feeling that "so these stupid pollsters don't call and pester me" is one of the leading reasons.

      No, one of the leading reasons is "so these stupid telemarketers don't call and pester me". The key difference is that a telemarketer wants to sell you something and is willing to harrass you endlessly to do so. A pollster just wants to know what you think on something, and in some cases is willing to give you incentive to do so.

      Also pollsters give up when you don't want to cooperate. A response

      • Pollsters give people a way to make their opinion heard. Telemarketers keep talking after you give them your opinion.

        Sometimes, telemarketing disguises itself as polling in so-called push polls [cbsnews.com], which are used for both political and commercial purposes.

  • 'Cept for one thing.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:47AM (#7843923)
    "If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
    • Telephone polls are meaningless vehicles for polling agencies to generate meaningless statistics to sell to whoever's paying their bill. Aside from potentially swaying people that are on the fence and whose minds are as maleable as chewed bubble gum, in my experience telephone polls aren't used as conclusive findings ... but as rough indicators and estimates of the current state of whatever issue is being polled.


    karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon....
    • in my experience telephone polls aren't used as conclusive findings ... but as rough indicators and estimates of the current state of whatever issue is being polled.

      Yes, but politicians routinely rely on polls for forming policy. Maybe they shouldn't, but they do.

      When the issue at hand is something like, "Should cell phone usage be permitted while driving?", only polling land-line customers may give a tremendously skewed view of the public's opinion on this issue.

      W

      • " in my experience telephone polls aren't used as conclusive findings ... but as rough indicators and estimates of the current state of whatever issue is being polled."

        Yes, but politicians routinely rely on polls for forming policy. Maybe they shouldn't, but they do.

        When the issue at hand is something like, "Should cell phone usage be permitted while driving?", only polling land-line customers may give a tremendously skewed view of the public's opinion on this issue.

        Personally, I think that phone poll

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • If you really want to get polling information about political stuff, use the internet.

          I'm not sure what country you are from, but in the US, the elderly are a large voting block with excellent turnout, yet they seem not to be as active on the internet.

          The younger generation, who is more active on the internet, have the voting turnout of a half-dead rock.

    • Telephone polls are meaningless... Alright, let's try this one on for size Let's say there is a close race going on, and one of the candidates is "actively and happily" married. The other candidate is single. If a polling firm was to call a lot of voters and ask this question "If you were told that one of the candidates in the upcoming [office] race was a homosexual, would that impact your decision?" Now let's say that this race is taking place in Alabama. This is called push polling. It can have a ve
    • The less polling the better. Maybe companies and politicians might actually have to try to communicate with people to find out what they are thinking.

      Plus, they don't into the account the group of folks, like me, who will give a pollster incorrect answers just to show my disdain for the polling process.

  • Does it matter ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:48AM (#7843924) Homepage
    From a mathematical point of view most surveys are fucked anyway. Biased data collection, misunderstood mathematical rules and "correction formulas" if the results don't seem to fit.
    The problem is that many of the people in this business aren't mathematician and if they are then they are at best only second rates ones.
    This poblem doesn't appear only in public survey - in fact most "statistics" in natural and political sciences are usually fucked. Most mathematicians don't care - we know that significance tests don't really give any viable results etc. So if people aren't interested in maths or aren't willing to invest time to understand it, then let them believe their rubbish.

    Nevertheless all this whining about "skewed" surveys is meaningless, it's like complaing that the moon is made from bad tasting cheese.

    • ...otherwise this business wouldn't exist.

      And if you think those in the business are bad at maths, think of who the customers are. Politicians and the such. Notorious maths flunkies. Show them some fancy pie charts and percent signs, especially those in their favor, and they're your best friend forever.

    • The real problem are the questions. An astonishing number of people has almost no opinion on most topics and will choose whatever sounds favorable at that instant. (e.g. "Should our heroic president, victor of three wars, be allowed by the rightous people in this country to serve additional four years as president of the United States or do we let the liberal trash win?" versus "Do we let that lying POS usurp the highest office in this country once more or are 4 years of unprecedented unemployment and a new

  • Boo f-ing hoo! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) * on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:56AM (#7843944) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, cry me a river. So, politicians won't know what to think. TV execs won't know what good shows to cancel next. Phone polling is the equivalent of jury duty and we know who is sitting on juries in this country. So next time a telemarketer calls, just tell them "I love chinks."

    (before people get all politically upset do a little research, I can't help it that you don't watch Conan O'Brien or even have a sense of humour)

  • The obvious answer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anon*127.0.0.1 ( 637224 ) <slashdot AT baudkarma DOT com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:58AM (#7843948) Journal
    Why can't the wireless companies set up a way to allow the caller to pay the charges? Politicians would get more accurate surveys, wireless companies would get another revenue stream, polling companies would finally be able to reach those elusive cell-only customers... everyone wins!

    Well okay, the consumer gets screwed with a bunch of survey calls that they don't want... but really, how important are the consumers anyway?

    • Re:The obvious answer (Score:3, Informative)

      by shani ( 1674 )
      In Europe the caller pays. It's a Good Thing(tm).

      The only trick in America would be that there would ahve to be some way to alert the caller to the type of charges they are about to incur.
      • in europe, the caller only pays if it's a local call. when you travel outside your own country a lot (like me) *you* pay!

        the idea of warning what it will cost you is great, but get the phone companies to do this... i guess not. if you go outside your own country in europe, the even charge you for voicemail messages you receive (not sure about sms, though). so if you refuse the call, and forgot to disable the voicemail service, you pay. nice, eh...
    • The caller does pay the cost of the call. You just exclude calling free phone numbers (0800 over here, presumably it's the same for 1-800 numbers) where the cost is passed on to the owner of the number.


      I don't see what the problem is.

    • Why can't the wireless companies set up a way to allow the caller to pay the charges?

      Technically, it's easy. Cell phones in most of the world work that way already.

      In the US, cell phone companies could give people personal 900 numbers, and/or adopt generic "caller pays" 900 call-in numbers (you call the 900 number, then you dial the cell phone number).

      OTOH, I really don't want pollsters to call me on my cell phone. I don't want them to call me at all.

      • "Why can't the wireless companies set up a way to allow the caller to pay the charges?"

        Technically, it's easy. Cell phones in most of the world work that way already.

        In the US, cell phone companies could give people personal 900 numbers, and/or adopt generic "caller pays" 900 call-in numbers (you call the 900 number, then you dial the cell phone number).

        OTOH, I really don't want pollsters to call me on my cell phone. I don't want them to call me at all.

        Actually, in the US the caller does pay when the

        • When someone calls you long-distance on a US cell phone, the caller pays for their portion of the call (their local connection and long distance charges) and you pay for the local portion of your connection (the wireless portion, no long distance charges).

          So, while the phone companies get paid two chunks of money from two people (and while I'm sure they overcharge), those chunks of money are for different services.
    • you are on the right track....

      Let's pass legislation that forces cell phone companies to not be able to charge for incoming calls. If I recieve a call and talk for 1 hour it costs nothing to me. If I make a call, the nthe minute timer can start ticking....

      but with the rampant greed there is out in the cellphone/telephone companies, this will never happen here in the USA.... even though it's a standard practice in europe.

      I guarentee that if such regulations were not in place for land-lines, they would b
      • but with the rampant greed there is out in the cellphone/telephone companies, this will never happen here in the USA.... even though it's a standard practice in europe.

        But unfortunately it has nothing to do with European phone companies beeing less "greedy". Just the system is different. Cell phone numbers can be identified by the prefix (OK, I don't know if this is really the case in all 30+ European countries with cell phone networks, but at least I don't know any exceptions...). So if you call a cell p
      • but with the rampant greed there is out in the cellphone/telephone companies, this will never happen here in the USA

        I beg to differ. The rampant commercialization/competition here in the USA is slowly forcing the cell phone providers to the same thing we have for landlines; unlimited usage for a flat fee. (Unlimited nights & weekends anyone?) Only a matter of time before one company springs for a really overpriced flat rate unlimited option. Then the price is set and competition starts bringing

  • Would you like to take a survey? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) * <cx@NosPAM.thefurryone.net> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @06:06AM (#7843972) Journal
    I'm somewhat reminded of the old Animaniacs skit from years ago.

    Seriously, I get a lot of calls from telemarketers and poll people. They annoy me more than other people because I sleep during the day, but for the most part I accept it as a consequence of being in the phone book. Anyone can look up my name, phone number, and address in the local white pages, run to a terminal, and google one or all of those to bug me.

    Every once in a while if the poll topic sounds interesting I'll do the poll-- well, OK, so I did it twice in the last six months, and really only because the interviewer sounded cute-- but the point is that I sometimes do the telephone polls in an attempt to influence the bias one way or another. If it's a poll I feel strongly about (like, say, the grocery stores in my area-- all of which are crap, thank you very much), I'll do it with the attempt to get something better in the area. If it's about gaming or electronics or somesuch, hell yeah I'll do it-- I like talking about games, and if you say that doing the survey gets me free stuff I'll ask to do it twice.

    The point is that not everyone unconditionally says "fuck off" to anyone who doesn't get recognized on their Caller ID. So telephone polls are skewed, simply because the people who do them anyway are either too dumb to say no or think they can change the results with it. Which one of these two categories I fall into is left as an exercise for the reader.
    • Of course people not answering the poll will affect the result. Any professional should know, that the larger percentage of people not wanting to answer, the less you can trust the result. But how about people deliberately giving incorrect answers? How do you find out how large a percentage they are? (Idea for the next slashdot poll perhaps?)

  • Poster gets it semi-right, Film @ 11 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fortunato_NC ( 736786 ) <verlinh75.msn@com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @06:10AM (#7843978) Homepage Journal
    The actual Dewey Defeats Truman headline was based more on early election returns than skewed polling. The famous error made concerning polling in the 1948 election was that Gallup simply stopped doing polls two weeks before the election and proclaimed that Dewey would win, not taking into account the massive sea change in public opinion that can occur over a two week span.

    The famous example of a poll gone bad because of telephone ownership statistics was the poll used by the magazine The Literary Digest to predict the 1936 presidential election between FDR and Al Landon. The magazine mailed ballots to 10 million individuals with listed phone numbers and/or car registrations, and tallied up roughly 2 million returned ballots. Based on the results, the magazine predicted a Landon victory, while in fact the result was a 46-state landslide for FDR (and remember, there were only 48 states in 1936)!

    The sample error in this survey was that telephone ownership and car ownership did not correlate to likeliness to vote in 1936. In 1936, at the height of the Great Depression, telephones and cars were luxury items that few people besides the wealthiest Americans could afford. The poor and lower class who were more likely to vote for FDR were not even sent ballots, so there was no way for their voices to be heard in this survey.

    The impact of this flawed survey was such that within a short time after the publication of the survey, The Literary Digest would go out of business.

    • Re:Poster gets it semi-right, Film @ 11 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sidecut ( 126820 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @07:29AM (#7844155) Homepage Journal
      Thank god you corrected this! I just heard about this on Nova. That's a fascinating story.

      As for the "Dewey Defeats Truman" episode, my understanding is that this was exit polling conducted by the Chicago Tribune in a massive, first of its kind, nationwide effort. Exit polling, as I'm sure you know, is generally highly accurate, since it reflects actual voters, not people who claim they're going to vote some months or weeks hence (or not).

      My father worked at the Tribune in 1948 and described to me the massive bank of telephone operators they had there, with stringers throughout the nation phoning in exit poll results, which were then tabulated by electromechanical adding machines. It was a very labor intensive effort.

      Anyway, despite its apparent "failure" -- i.e. in predicting the winner -- I believe that the Tribune's use of exit polls was actually looked at as quite a success, because it did produce good numbers. Their problem wasn't the data they received from exit polling, it was hubris: they looked at the data, which showed a very close election, and decided to predict the winner despite the closeness. They gambled, and "lost," but didn't lose much.

  • The problem is big and real (Score:5, Informative)

    by dybdahl ( 80720 ) <(kd.lhadbyd) (ta) (ofni)> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @06:27AM (#7844009) Homepage Journal
    The article doesn't provide many numbers, so I better provide some. In Denmark, there are more cellular subscribers now than fixed line subscribers. Of the 11 houses on our street, 2 only use cellular phones, and one of these has ADSL but no fixed line subscription.

    In my nephiew's class, 2 families out of 24 don't have a phone number that belongs to a fixed line.

    Currently, a fixed line costs 255 euros to create in Denmark, and 16 euros a month. It's cheaper per minute than a mobile phone, unless you call a mobile phone - in which case the mobile phone is cheaper per minute. Add to that the costs of buying a phone.

    A mobile phone can be bought very cheap - used phones are normally 15-30 euros, there is no subscriptions fees and it's now down to 9 cents a minute outside workhours and down to 11 cents a minute in workhours. All prices include the Danish 25% Value Added Tax.

    So in general, mobile phones are cheaper for most people, and more and more people are abandoning their fixed lines. The skew is already here and it's growing.

  • Who Cares ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CmdrGravy ( 645153 )
    Who cares if pollsters can't get accurate results, although newspapers, TV seem to love polls I'm sure that most people couldn't care less what the polls say and are happy to wait until the results of ( whatever ) are announced offically.

    • Re:Who Cares ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sidecut ( 126820 )

      Much polling is done not for public consumption, but for private (read: corporate or political). I'd be willing to bet that the majority of polls conducted are never published. So who cares about the accuracy of polling? The organizations or political candidates who paid bigtime to have these done. Decisions that can be worth millions of dollars are based sometimes on polling data. Poll results are a form of business or political intelligence. Certainly in war time we all appreciate the value of intel

  • And People who read news & blogs online not po (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cryofan ( 194126 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @06:57AM (#7844091) Journal
    Because often they are using their phone line to go online via their dialup ISP connection. These people are those who spend MOST of their leisure online reading news, blogs, and doing other leisure reading and reading, ALL online. And at night or at other times, they download books and music from Kazaa or Usenet. Thus, they cannot be reached by phone by either parent, friend, or pollster. Thus, the Always-Online political persuasion is not reflected in political polls, such as Presidential race polls (Go Kucinich! [kucinich.us]) and other polls.


    I propose that we Always-Online types are often of radical political persuasions. And because our opinions are not reflected in the polls, the polls come out looking LESS radical, and more mainstream than America really is in reality.



    And since one big factor in politics is The BandWagon Factor, our absence from political polls means that America is being deradicalized. Look for example at online polls. DO they have somewhat different results from telephone polls? You bet!


    What can we Always-Onliners do about it? VOTE!!


    See you at the polling place.

  • Land-line number portability (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In Denmark we got number portability for land-lines a couple of years ago, so area codes do not necessarily tell you where people live. Since telephone pollsters use area codes to make sure they have geographical coverage, this presents a similar problem.

  • For whom the call costs money? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @07:58AM (#7844251)
    This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money.
    I'd like to sign up immediately for a land phone plan whereby I pay 1 cent per call I receive.
  • apply to telemarkers? I thought that they were not allowed to call cells either.

  • 20% of those surveyed are liars. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @08:21AM (#7844353)
    A survey held at my university on the day after student government elections showed that 30% of those surveyed had voted. The actual turnout was only 10%. Without the slightest embarassment, the poll takers reported a "margin of error" of 2% on their numbers.

    There are three very different types of people in the world: 1) those that lie on surveys, 2) those that avoid surveys, and 3) those that actually participate and tell the truth on surveys. I would suggest that the errors and biases introduced by groups 1 & 2 make the data from group 3 all but meaningless.

    • A survey held at my university on the day after student government elections showed that 30% of those surveyed had voted. The actual turnout was only 10%. Without the slightest embarassment, the poll takers reported a "margin of error" of 2% on their numbers.

      Perhaps people willing to respond to the survey were more likely to have voted. I see nothing necessarily inconsistent about 30% of SURVEY RESPONDENTS having voted, but only 10% of the student body as a whole (which would include everyone who didn't

      • Perhaps people willing to respond to the survey were more likely to have voted. I see nothing necessarily inconsistent about 30% of SURVEY RESPONDENTS having voted, but only 10% of the student body as a whole (which would include everyone who didn't respond to the survey.)

        Yes, voters may have been more willing to answer the survey. Or non-voters may have lied about voting (out of embarassment or a desire to please the pollster). The point is that the survey results were necessarily inconsistent with t
  • A recent study indicates that 80% of pollsters just make up numbers, anyway.

    I wonder what effect the cell number portability will have on pollsters, though - if my landline prefix was 489, and now I'm on a cell phone with the same prefix, how will they know it's a cell? List brokers may now need to run their lists against customer lists from wireless providers, to remove any duplicates. Which will drive up costs, especially if they had to match against the national dnc registry too. Perhaps list purchasi
  • Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway. If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone.

    Um, no. 18-24 year olds are also less likely to vote than say 50-70 year olds who have regular land line telephones.

    For political polls, this might result in more
    • For political polls, this might result in more accurate polling.

      False. Accuracy is based on how close the prediction is to reality, repeatedly and repeatably. A smart bomb's guidance system is may be very inaccuracte even if it hits the target dead center every now and then. If the polling method gets lucky in one instance, but fails miserably other times, it's not accurate, it's lucky.
      If a political issue is ever allowed to come up that young people are very interested in, things could get out of hand
  • This wouldn't be a problem if US mobile phone companies weren't so braindead in their charging plans, forcing people to pay for incoming calls. The US is essentially the only country in the world that does this, and it really doesn't make sense. Everywhere else, only outgoing calls cost money, and mobile phone companies are still very profitable.

    *sigh* How is it that, with all their money, the US is stuck with a mobile phone system inferior to that of most third world countries? I live in Tanzania, and
  • The solution is for the surveying companies to hire some local temps and then have these people canvass the local schools and malls. Ask no more than ten questions and offer those being surveyed coupons for local businesses if they participate. In addition to a coupon for participation, give them a pre-paid postcard to fill out so you can get a snail mail address (and email addy if they are inclined to give it out).
  • Exclusion of a particular socioeconomic, political, racial, geographic or other group can skew poll results, because a reliable poll must draw responses at random from as wide a field as possible.

    "If enough people have no chance of being included, survey results will be invalid," said the National Council on Public Polls

    Their polls are already skewed, and always have been. The polls ignore the demographic group that:
    A> Lets the machine answer the phone OR
    B> Hangs up immediately on ALL automated c
  • Come on, we all know these polls are skewed already. Even if the polls themselves used well-asked questions and an accurate cross-section of the population, the reporting on them is usually very biased. It's funny how "40%" becomes "nearly half of all Americans" when it supports the writer's opinion.

  • Surveys Circumvent FCC Regulations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by omnirealm ( 244599 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @10:30AM (#7845230) Homepage
    I have a brother-in-law who sells vacuum cleaners. He told me that his company sets up sales appointments for him. I asked him how his company finds these people, and he responded that the company starts out with a "survey" call. If "they qualify," then they will get a second phone call asking if they would like a visit from a company representative to tell them more about these vacuum cleaners.

    This company argues that those who participated in the initial survey have a "prior business relationship" with the company, and so even if they are on the National Do-not-call Registry, the company can still make a soliciting call to them. The survey is just a front to get around FCC regulations. Hence, I personally will never respond to a survey call, because I cannot trust the intent of the survey-takers.

    On that note, I got a call on behalf of my local state trooper organization a couple of weeks ago. After some small talk, the guy on the phone asked, "We offer a $45, a $50, and a $60 contribution amount to the state trooper fund. Which of these amount would work best for you?" Well, first of all, I *hate* coercive questions. I told him, "I don't know; I'll have to think about it." He responded along the lines of, "Well, we do have a minimum contribution option of $15. Why don't I send you a letter about this, and you don't have to commit to anything at the moment." Okay, whatever. So I got a letter in the mail thanking me for committing to giving them money, and I noticed (in small print) a mention of thanks for this telemarketing company for helping the state troopers raise these funds.

    That did it for me. Under no uncertain circumstances will I ever deliberately justify a telemarketing firm's existence. Part of my contribution would go to help support the telemarketers. I shredded that letter on the spot, and when that marketing firm calls again, I'm going to tell them in a very unpleasant way exactly why they never heard back from me (hint: it will probably emphasize exactly what I think about telemarketing types).

  • Technology advances, and things that depend on that technology either need to advance or will be lost.

    Having just completed the Christmas season (or "holidays"), I'm sure a lot of people (at least Americans) are used to seeing the Salvation Army people ringing for change and small bills. With society moving more and more to a cashless society, they can expect to see falling donations from this practice.

    There's no reasons pollsters shouldn't expect the same since they can't call cell phones.

  • What kind of democracy do you want? The kind where a non-representative skewed-random sample of people are given the power of declaring what the people think? Disregard all media polls! The only polls that matter are the ones where you put your ballot in the box.
  • If you look over most Gallup polls, the average poll sample is usually 600-1200 people. That's less than 1/100th of 1% of the United States population.

    How could it possibly be accurate? Short answer: It isn't remotely accurate. Gallup had Bush winning the 2000 election by as much as 7-10 percentage points. He lost the popular vote by 1-2%. That's a 8-11% inaccuracy, roughly. Not to spark debate by using this particular election for an example, but just referring to one most people would remember. Polls com

  • Polls don't reflect me anyway (Score:3, Insightful)

    by koreth ( 409849 ) * on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @12:31PM (#7846309)
    I usually participate in polls when someone calls, because I want to see my point of view reflected in the results -- to the extent that the poll is going to influence someone's policy somewhere, I'd rather have them do something closer to what I want.

    The trouble is, it seems like many of the polls I'm hit with don't really account for someone as weird as me.

    For example, a couple months ago I got a call from someone doing a poll on consumer electronics and home automation. Great, I thought, that's right up my alley. Unfortunately, a lot of the questions were along the lines of, "Do you plan to purchase a computer capable of recording TV shows in the next six months?" The honest answer is, "Not unless one of the two I already own breaks." So I have to decide on the spot how I want to misrepresent myself: do I answer honestly and underrepresent my interest in such things, or lie and overrepresent my interest in purchasing such a thing? (I answered "no" to that one.)

    Political polls aren't quite as bad in that regard, but they also usually fail to include reasonable options for someone with, say, a vehemently pro-personal-freedom point of view, so you're stuck with five or ten seconds to figure out which of the unsuitable multiple choices will skew the poll closest to what you'd like to see.

    Now, obviously in most cases this is due to poor poll design, but in my experience most polls aren't all that well designed. So if I decide to switch off my landline at some point, I don't think I'll lose much sleep over pollsters' inability to get highly inaccurate poll results out of me.

  • Doesn't Caller ID have more of an effect? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bgfay ( 5362 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @12:47PM (#7846434) Homepage
    I would think that the increased use of caller ID would already be making phone polls almost worthless. Who answers their phone anymore if they don't know the caller? There is a certain population that just doesn't want to participate in surveys any more and there is another group that won't be bothered with phone calls. So who is answering these survey phone calls? That's a piece of data I would like to see.

    Of course, the news media outlets (radio, television, newspaper, and web) like the polls because they make for quick headlines and short articles. Thus, the polls results become a force driving opinion disproportionately.

    Of course, I'm not a statistician, so I'm probably just blowing smoke out of my ass.
  • as they currently stand have any real validty. LOL
    As long as they can restrict their calls to a particular area code its not of any use anyways, and almost all of them are very minimal people likely to reflect the opinions of the surveyor.

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