After Tuesday's class with guest speaker and polling extraordinaire, Professor Charles Franklin, I further developed my understanding of the polling process. I also managed to shrink my dislike for polls significantly. Franklin shared his background in polling and how he reached the level of skill he now has. I initially thought that all I would learn was which candidates were projected to win in the 2012 Presidential Election, but I realized Franking implicitly taught us much more.
Franklin was one of the two founding members of Pollster. The site started with nothing, but was eventually able to attract such a high amount of visitors that The Huffington Post actually bought it. Franklin admitted that it wasn't the perfect business model at first, but rather more of a learning process and eventually it paid off.
"Aggregation provides people with a more complete picture," he said. "We were some of the first to start aggregating polls and finding trends across polls."
Professor Franklin also addressed the issues and problems to polling, such as non-participation among random samples. He also included that through web surveys, people appear more willing to participate because it is on their own time and feels more private than a phone conversation.
Potentially the most interesting part of Franklin's lecture was the end – and I don't mean because it was over. Professor Herbert Lowe asked Franklin what his ideal polling topic would be and I was surprised at Franklin's answer. He said he would love to survey people about life in general. More specifically, how they live, how much time they attribute to various activities and the importance level of different material and non-material things. As someone who is very interested in cultural anthropology, I would be very interested to see this poll actually conducted and analyze the results.
Franklin was one of the two founding members of Pollster. The site started with nothing, but was eventually able to attract such a high amount of visitors that The Huffington Post actually bought it. Franklin admitted that it wasn't the perfect business model at first, but rather more of a learning process and eventually it paid off.
"Aggregation provides people with a more complete picture," he said. "We were some of the first to start aggregating polls and finding trends across polls."
Professor Franklin also addressed the issues and problems to polling, such as non-participation among random samples. He also included that through web surveys, people appear more willing to participate because it is on their own time and feels more private than a phone conversation.
Potentially the most interesting part of Franklin's lecture was the end – and I don't mean because it was over. Professor Herbert Lowe asked Franklin what his ideal polling topic would be and I was surprised at Franklin's answer. He said he would love to survey people about life in general. More specifically, how they live, how much time they attribute to various activities and the importance level of different material and non-material things. As someone who is very interested in cultural anthropology, I would be very interested to see this poll actually conducted and analyze the results.