Independent topic Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Independent topic - Speech or Presentation Example In professional polling the importance of sampling validity is immeasurable. The first step is to fully identify the sampling frame from the population that the poll seeks to represent. This is followed by a random selection of a small percentage from within the sampling frame to represent the entire population targeted by that poll. Random here implies that everyone has an equal chance to be selected and this can only be achieved if the method chosen to identify individuals to be interviewed is free of bias. Even though Statistics postulates that the actual number of people interviewed for a given sample is less important than the soundness of ‘randomness’ employed in the process, you still need to balance the economic cost of sample sizes with the desired level of accuracy required. Accuracy of plus or minus three percentage points margin of error is the acceptable level for professional polls. Once the individual to be interviewed has been identified it is important not to change the selected person so as to eliminate possibility of bias. In the case of telephone sampling this would involve performing call-backs until such a time that selected individual is available. However, more importantly for the interview is the wording of the questions and the order in which they are set to be answered. Crafting fair and objective questions requires extensive knowledge of public opinion, care and discipline. To achieve this it is good practice to have exact wording of a question held constant from year to year to analyze trends and also to have multiple questions to help put the research within a certain context. These two practices come in handy when interpreting the poll results. Finally, for accountability purposes the polling company needs to make its data available to the public domain for any interested parties to draw their own conclusions about what the survey data means an d to assess whether the poll was conducted in a professional manner. The New York