The purpose of any survey is to gather information about a target group by makin

The purpose of any survey is to gather information about a target group by making inferences from the answers provided by a sample of respondents taken from that population. Here is the premise: By evaluating the answers of the sample that actually responds to the survey, the response pattern will be similar to the attitudes within the target group. Since the sample is taken from the overall population of interest, the opinions for which the survey was designed to measure are assumed to occur to the same extent and manner in both the sample and population.
How accurate are such inferences? The answer lies in the survey methodology. Every survey is prone to a certain amount of errors, which is introduced by the survey methodology process. Practitioners should be mindful of the potential sources of errors and methods to minimize them in order to improve the accuracy of the survey information. The design of a survey and the way its data are collected can create bias. Bias errors occur when the sample of people responding to the survey differ systematically from the target group as a whole. For example, average income information in a neighborhood may be distorted by excluding individuals who live in shelters or group homes. How extensive an error depends upon the following: (1) how closely the characteristics of the sample respondents resembles the target group and (2) how well the questions in the survey are really tapping into the information that they were intended to measure. For example, errors can be caused when respondents misunderstand survey questions, don’t have all the facts needed to answer, or deliberately distort their answers for social desirability.
Survey data quality is affected by the following: (1) low response rates to the survey; (2) the honesty of participant responses, particularly for questions of a sensitive nature; (3) the completeness of the responses, particularly for interview questions, and (4) general data entry errors. This week, examine how the sampling of respondents can create bias within a survey’s results. Conduct an Internet search of a recent public poll from a nonpartisan polling organization, and then examine how the data collection plan limits the interpretation of the survey results. Consider the following points:
· Why did you think this polling strategy was chosen?
· What other data collection strategies might have also been appropriate?
· Did the data collection method limit the quality of data collected? How accurate were the inferences?
· What are the strengths and weaknesses of the poll in terms of:
o coverage error
o sampling error
o non-response error
Support your assignment with at least three references from scholarly sources.