The Iowa Gallup Award
for Excellent Journalism
Using Polls

Polls and surveys are defined as the systematic collection of responses to a standardized questionnaire from a sample of individual respondents.

Polls are used to describe public opinion. They are only a part of the multi-billion dollar survey research industry. Other aspects of the industry include market research for product development.

Polls that are acceptable to the industry must be done randomly in a way that provides the probability of questioning a sample as diverse as the larger population. Most qualified polls are done by phone, are "in the field" more than a couple days, allow one response per person, and have a sample of about 1,000. The questions in the survey are carefully reviewed to make sure they are logical, unbiased and clearly understandable.