Episode Details

Dr. Ashley Amaya is a senior survey methodologist at Pew Research Center. She has a PhD in Survey Methodology and is an expert when it comes to polling the country’s opinions. Our conversation highlights how the simple polling numbers you see on the news are the results of months—sometimes years—of work.

Dr. Amaya shares how Pew recruits and maintains high-quality samples of survey respondents, carefully designs the questions that get asked, and checks their surveys’ demographics against the broader population. We also talk about what consumers should look for when assessing a poll’s legitimacy and where else experts are looking for the public’s opinion.

A few things that come up in this episode:

• 65% of U.S. adults think there is intelligent life on other planets (Pew Research Center; June 30, 2021)
• Pew Report: “Measuring the Risks of Panel Conditioning in Survey Research” (June 9, 2021)
• Sampling methods: address-based sampling vs. random digit dialing (RDD) vs. non-probability sampling
• Weighting survey responses by demographics (see this page on Pew’s website)
• The importance of well-written survey questions (see this video from Pew)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/polling-101-with-ashley-amaya/

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