POLSCI 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Sampling Bias, Public Opinion, Rationality
22 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
A prediposition is a deeper value or belief about politics that tends to be stable over time. The challenge of having many principals: public and government is a principal agent problem. Many people are simply uninformed about government and policy. Early attempts at measurement: used to look at size of crowds and number of people buying and reading pamphlets to determine pubic opinion. Used straw polls which just mailed out millions of sample ballots to readers before a presidential election and then recorded responses. Possible biases: researchers try to minimize bias, which is often unintentioanl and a natural outcome of the research process. Opinion polls reported in the media and with marketing campaigns are heavily biased. Issues of bias because of technology (telephones, email, internet access, etc). The way questions are wored can introduce other kinds of bias. Use misleading information to get results that they can use for a campaign.
