SurveyUSA

SurveyUSA is a polling firm in the United States. It conducts market research for corporations and interest groups, but is best known for conducting opinion polls for various political offices and questions. SurveyUSA conducts these opinion polls under contract by over 50 television stations (who also use the SurveyUSA market research to fine tune their newscasts for higher ratings).

The difference between SurveyUSA and other telephone polling firms is two fold. First, SurveyUSA does not use live call center employees, but an automated system. Taped questions are asked of the respondent by a professional announcer (usually a local news anchor), and the respondent is invited to press a button on their touch tone telephone or record a message at a prompt designating their selection. Secondly, SurveyUSA uses more concise language, especially for ballot propositions, than competitors. This can lead to diverging results, such as for California Proposition 76, where one version of the SurveyUSA question with a one sentence description, polled significantly differently compared to another version with a three sentence description (which was similar to a version of the question used by other pollsters, which used a five or six sentence question). [1]

External links

• SurveyUSA web site
• Error and Bias in 2006 Congressional District polling: 58 pollsters, 211 Congressional District polls analyzed.
• SurveyUSA's 14-year election poll track record, comparing every election poll SurveyUSA has ever taken to the work of other polling organizations and to the actual election results
• SurveyUSA's complete statement of methodology
• SurveyUSA President Jay Leve interviewed by The Hotline, National Journal's Daily Briefing on Politics
• Article with discussion and criticism of Survey USA's polling methodology
• Article from Public Opinion Quarterly by Mark Blumenthal, author of the Mystery Pollster blog, in which Blumenthal discusses advantages and disadvantages of the automated survey technology used in SurveyUSA's polls.
• Paper by Joel Bloom of the University of Oregon, presented at the 2005 AAPOR conference, in which Bloom found SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports, both automated survey pollsters, "provided accurate and reliable data" in their presidential election polling.
• Paper by Joseph Shipman and Jay Leve of SurveyUSA, presented at the 2005 AAPOR conference, in which methods of evaluating the accuracy of polling organizations are discussed.
• Paper by Joseph Shipman and Jay Leve of SurveyUSA, presented at the 2005 AAPOR conference, in which a new measure of election poll accuracy is presented.
• Paper by Joseph Shipman and Jay Leve of SurveyUSA, presented at the 2006 AAPOR conference, in which two methods of telephone sampling are evaluated.

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