Polling

Neil Postman describes polling as one of the invisible technologies. He says there are some uses of polling that may be said to be reliable, but not useful (132-33). Postman argues that there are four problems with polling. The first problem has to do with the way the questions are worded. Postman says that "The public's "opinion" on almost any issue will be a function of the question asked" (134). Postman is unaware of the fact that social scientists look very closely at the validity of the poll. "Questions are carefully worded and pretested in pilot studies to ensure their clarity and impartiality. Questions must avoid biases in wording that suggest a socially desirable answer or lead respondents to agree with one side of an issue" (Oskamp). According to Postman, "The second problem is that the technique of polling promotes the assumption that an opinion is a thing inside people that can be exactly located and extracted by the pollster's questions" (134). Postman takes this too far. Opinion polls weren't developed to get a detailed description of a person's personal opinion. "Opinion polls have been developed largely since the 1930's as a scientific way of learning what large numbers of people think and feel about various topics. The primary goal of opinion polling is to describe the distribution of public opinion at a given point in time" (Oskamp). The very nature of polls prevents social scientists from getting detailed opinions. A poll is not an interview. The third problem is that polling ignores the respondents prior knowledge about the subject being surveyed. Another factor that affects validity is this prior knowledge. Pollsters determine whether the respondents have any information about the topic on which to base their opinions. When conducting a poll, the researchers do not leave anything out. Social scientists performing a poll want to keep sampling error to a minimum, so they prepare the questions and perform the poll very carefully. The last problem, according to Postman, is "It shifts the locus of responsibility between political leaders and their constituents" (135). I think Postman takes this "problem" to the extreme. Postman says in his book, "Before the ascendance of polling, political leaders, though never indifferent to the opinions of their constituents, were largely judged on their capacity to make decisions based on such wisdom as they possessed; that is, political leaders were responsible for the decisions they made. With the refinement and extension of the polling process, they are under increasing pressure to forgo deciding anything for themselves and to defer to the opinions of the voters, no matter how ill-informed and shortsighted those opinions might be (135-36). Our political leaders don't forgo deciding anything for themselves due to public opinion. Public opinion may affect their decisions, but it does not make their decisions for them. Postman makes it seem like our politicians are puppets controlled by polling. I have a problem with Postman even considering this a problem with polling. The first three problems deal with actual polling processes and techniques. The last problem deals with Postman's opinion of politicians. This doesn't support his argument at all. Postman got a little bit off track here.

As a sociology major, I have some background in polls and survey techniques. The majority of surveys are done in the probability method of sampling, in which respondents are chosen in random selection methods. This method prevents bias and reduces the amount of error in the data collected. Surveys are conducted in a very scientific way to obtain data with the least amount of sampling error. The interviewers are carefully trained, and the majority of surveys turnout valid and reliable data (Oskamp).

Here's a link to the Gallup Organization one of the most respected polling companies in the world.