Open access poll

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An open access poll is a type of opinion poll in which participants are self-selected. The term includes call-in, mail-in, and some online polls.

The most common examples of open access polls are those which ask for people to phone a number, or to click a voting option on a website or send back a coupon cut from a newspaper. By contrast, professional polling companies use a variety of techniques to attempt to ensure that the polls they conduct are representative, reliable and scientific. The most glaring difference between an open access poll and a legitimate poll is that open access polls have self-selected participants, while scientific polls typically randomly select their samples (occasionally on the street or at the door, but much more commonly by telephone or on the internet) and weight them to make them representative. See Opinion Poll for more information.

Contents 1 Advantages 2 Disadvantages 3 Online poll 4 Voodoo poll 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Advantages

Since participants in an open access poll are volunteers rather than a random sample, such polls represent the most interested individuals, just as in voting. In the case of political polls, such participants might be more likely voters, and elections are won by those that show up.

[edit] Disadvantages

Due to selection bias, open access polls may not have participants that represent the larger population. As a consequence, the results of the poll cannot be generalized, but are only valid for the participants of the poll.

[edit] Online poll

An online poll is a survey in which participants communicate their responses via the Internet, typically by completing a questionnaire presented in a web page. Online polls may allow anyone to participate, or they may be restricted to a sample drawn from a larger panel. The use of online panels has become increasingly popular and is now the single biggest research method in Australia.^[1]

Proponents of scientific online polling state that in practice their results are no less reliable than traditional polls, and that the problems faced by traditional polling, such as inadequate data for quota design and poor response rates for phone polls, can also lead to systemic bias. ^[2][3] Some others express the hope that careful choice of a panel of possible respondents may allow online polling to become a useful tool of analysis, but feel that this is rarely the case. ^[4]

[edit] Voodoo poll

A voodoo poll (or pseudo-poll) is a pejorative description of an opinion poll with no statistical or scientific reliability and which is therefore not a good indicator of opinion on any given issue. A voodoo poll will tend to involve self-selection, will be unrepresentative of the target population, and is often very easy to rig by those with a partisan interest in the results of the poll.^[5][6]

The term was coined by Sir Robert Worcester, founder of legitimate polling company MORI which he chaired for 36 years to June 2005, with special reference to "phone-in" polls. He used the term in British newspaper The Independent on July 23, 1995 to show how easy it was to rig a phone-in poll by voting nine times. The term is used frequently on Anthony Wells' popular and current UK Polling Report blog to refer to unscientific, unrepresentative and unreliable polls.

[edit] See also

• Push poll
• Biased sample
• Voxpop

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• www.doubletongued.org's source for attributing "voodoo poll" definition to Sir Bob Worcester
• Uses of "voodoo poll" in the media over past 15 years
• Example of a voodoo poll on public opinion on proposed anti-terror legislation in Britain on BBC Website
• [1] Reference to voodoo poll in academic article, page 11 of 31