Commercial voter files have been used in a wide variety of ways, either by themselves or in conjunction with other data. Although such files have been employed by political campaigns for many years, their use by journalists and others interested in elections has increased recently as familiarity with the files has grown and the ancillary […]
Several of the adjustment approaches used in this study require a dataset that is highly representative of the U.S. adult population. This dataset essentially serves as a reference for making the survey at hand (e.g., the online opt-in samples) more representative. When selecting a population dataset, researchers typically use a large, federal benchmark dataset such […]
The public has long been divided over issues of race: The extent to which discrimination exists and what – if any – approaches should be undertaken to address it. In recent years, growing shares of the public say more needs to be done to address racial equality and see discrimination against blacks as an impediment […]
Historically, public opinion surveys have relied on the ability to adjust their datasets using a core set of demographics – sex, age, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and geographic region – to correct any imbalances between the survey sample and the population. These are all variables that are correlated with a broad range of attitudes […]
To understand the relative merits of alternative adjustment procedures, each was assessed on its effectiveness at reducing bias for 24 different benchmarks drawn from high-quality, “gold-standard” surveys. These benchmarks cover a range of topics including civic and political engagement (both difficult topics for surveys in general), technology use, personal finances, household composition and other personal […]