StinkyJournalism.org Debuts the PollSkeptics
Report, a New Column Penned by Veteran Pollsters
NEW YORK/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- StinkyJournalism.org
announces the launch of a bimonthly, critical column about public
opinion polls, entitled PollSkeptics Report.
Authored by two veterans of the polling profession, George Bishop of
the University of Cincinnati and David Moore of the University of New
Hampshire, the column will take a critical and skeptical look at ongoing
poll releases in the news media. The debut column, "We are Poll
Skeptics, Not Poll Cynics" to be posted on Monday, April 5, 2010,
broadly outlines the authors' critical stance toward many of the poll
findings reported in the news.
Bishop and Moore are also the creators of the popular Annual Top Ten
"Dubious Polling" Awards, posted on StinkyJournalism.org. Alexa ranks
StinkyJournalism.org in the Top 20 most visited news media watchdogs.
"We believe that polls done properly can provide useful insights
about what the public thinks," says Bishop, a long-time scholar and
practitioner of surveys. "But too often pollsters use faulty techniques
that produce an illusion of public opinion. In this column we plan to
demonstrate the difference between the fiction and reality of what the
public may be thinking."
Moore, a former managing editor of the Gallup Poll, believes that
polls are especially useful when asking people about their personal
experiences. "But when it comes to measuring the public's policy
preferences," he says, "the polls often provide misleading and
contradictory results that undermine their credibility. The problem is
with poorly designed and executed polls, not the public."
George F. Bishop is Professor of Political Science and Director of
the Graduate Certificate Program in Public Opinion and Survey Research
at the University of Cincinnati. He is author most recently of The
Illusion of Public Opinion: Fact and Artifact in American Public Opinion
Polls (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), which was included in Choice
Magazine's list of outstanding academic titles for 2005.
David W. Moore is Senior Fellow of the Carsey Institute at the
University of New Hampshire. He is a former Vice President of the Gallup
Organization and Managing Editor of the Gallup Poll. Before that, he
was Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire.
He is author most recently of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the
Truth Behind the Polls (Beacon Press, 2008; revised paperback edition,
2009), referred to by Publishers' Weekly as a "succinct and damning
critique...Keen and witty throughout."
StinkyJournalism.org is published by Art Science Research Laboratory
(ASRL), a not-for-profit, co-founded by Rhonda Roland Shearer, adjunct
lecturer at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University
of Iowa, and her late husband, Harvard professor and scientist, Stephen
Jay Gould. ASRL is a non-partisan journalism ethics program in which
students and young journalists work with professional researchers to
promote the media's use of scientific methods and experts before
publication.
Source: StinkyJournalism.org
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