Introduction

Abstract

Americans frequently encounter the term “survey” in the mass media---whenever an author, reporter, commentator, or blogger makes reference to a poll or survey of some group of people, such as registered voters, likely consumers, or television viewers. Newspaper stories, magazine articles, radio programs, television broadcasts, and internet blogs are filled with data derived from surveys of one sort or another. Ultimately a survey is nothing more than a set of questions asked of some set of respondents drawn from a larger population. If the subset is chosen via standard sampling procedures from a reasonably complete list of individuals who make up the population, it constitutes a probability sample and averages and other statistics derived from it can be assumed to represent conditions in the population accurately, subject only to random variation.