final on on Iraq war poll [I endorse the "idiotic" nature of open online and telephone polls -- djf]

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: John Shoch 
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 15:38:38 -0800
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Iraq war poll [I endorse the "idiotic" nature of
open online and telephone polls -- djf]

For IP, if you like, but please remove my email address....]

Most of the Internet-based polling is a form of "volunteer" self-selected
polling -- which is clearly unscientific, subject to manipulation, and
should never be believed.

The professional polling industry knows how to solve this:  to get a proper
cross-section of the population you need to do an appropriate random (not
self-selected) sampling.  This is often done via "random digit dialing"
(RDD) over the phone.

Unfortunately, people are less willing to pick up the phone and speak to a
pollster, so it's gotten harder to do quality polling.

I have the good fortune to sit on the Board of a company which has combined
the discipline of RDD with the flexibility of the Internet.  Knowledge
Networks (KN) uses the labor-intensive effort of RDD to find a
higher-quality sample of homes, which are then enlisted to use the Internet
to participate in statistically-valid polls.  [To help ensure the validity
of the panel, for example, they have to deal with households which have no
computer -- KN gives these households a WebTV box, to get their input.]

Knowledge Networks was formed by two well-respected political scientists at
Stanford, Doug Rivers and Norman Nie (previously the founder of SPSS).
Much of the polling is actually done for market research customers, but a
portion of it is for political polling and public policy work.
It's been used to track opinions on the situation in Iraq:
  http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/press/releases/2003/013103_pipa.htm
It's been used to get real-time assessments of the State of the Union speech
for CBS News: 
  http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/press/releases/2003/012903_cbssou.htm
It's been used for public policy research at CMU, Penn, and elsewhere:
  http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/GANPdescriptionsKNPanel.pdf

John Shoch
Alloy Ventures

------ End of Forwarded Message

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