PS 104, Problems In US Politics, Spring, 2005.................................................. Assignment 1: Public Opinion
Choose a political topic for which you can find two recent polls (after January 1st) from different organizations,
then analyze, compare and contrast the polls’ results, addressing the following issues raised in our readings:
1) Sponsoring organization. Is the poll from a media or academic source, or a biased source? How does this
affect the way you scrutinize the results? What type of poll is it?
2) Question wording. Are the questions written so as to obtain an unbiased measure of public opinion, or a
slanted one? Even if the intentions are good, might unintentional biases be built in?
3) Question order or context. Might the responses to your question(s) be affected by the inclusions of other
questions before them? (You will need more than 1-2 survey questions to answer this part.)
4) Nonattitudes. “Is the proposed topic of the poll one on which citizens have genuine opinions?”
5) Rational public opinion. How informed or rational do you think the opinions expressed in your survey items
are? Make sure to discuss both individual and aggregate rationality.
6) Sample properties. Most of these will be pretty similar from survey to survey, but make sure to report them.
Include sample size (as well as the size of any important subsamples), reported margin of error, sample
framework (e.g., adults vs. registered voters), and dates of interviewing.
7) Polling and democracy. Using your polls, address the “big picture” issues like how polls are used in a
democracy vs. how you think they should be used, and why.
Structure your paper as follows:
• Start with a one-paragraph introduction in which you introduce the topic and discuss the polls you found.
(Don’t include exact question wording here, since you’ll cover that under #2 above.)
• Then write 1-2 paragraphs on each of the seven items above, making sure to relate each point both to the
specifics of your survey items and to the readings. Label each of these sections clearly, but don’t leave extra
space between paragraphs.
• Conclude with a one-paragraph discussion of the relative value of the two surveys, including any closing
thoughts you might have.
Other instructions:
• If you have any questions as to whether your topic is appropriate for this assignment please ask one of us
substantially before the due date.
• Polls need to be recent enough to take into account any likely shifts in opinion. For topics currently
receiving a great deal of public attention your polls should be very recent.
• Attach a printout of your polls at the end of your paper.
• Write 5-7 pages. Use a 12-point scalable font, double spacing and 1-inch margins all around.
• Number your pages and staple them together.
• Cite your sources (see more on this below).
• We will not accept any papers without page numbers, staples, and the polls attached.
• Late papers will be marked down one part of a grade for each day or part of a day they are late.
Make frequent references to the readings. You are required to cite the sources of your ideas, whether you use
direct quotes or just refer to the ideas. Use quotation marks for direct quotes (and never paraphrase). Failure to
do so is plagiarism and will result in dire consequences. Using frequent citations isn't just something annoying
you have to do – it helps the person grading your paper see just how much you have learned from the readings;
thus it's to your own advantage to cite your sources frequently. Don’t use footnotes or endnotes – for readings
from the class, give the author and the page number in parentheses after the cited material; for any outside
readings (which are not required), do the same, but include a bibliography at the end (not on a separate sheet).
Your grade will be based partly on the quality of your writing. The ability to write clearly, convincingly,
and without errors is the most important skill you can take into "the real world." People will judge you harshly
if your writing is poor. Here are a few tips that will help your grades: (1) Run spell-check. (2) Proof-read
carefully – some words resemble others with very different meanings, and spell-check doesn't fix punctuation
errors, incomplete sentences, run-on sentences, or other grammatical errors. (3) Don't confuse plurals and
possessives –plurals don't need apostrophes; possessives do, except for pronouns like “hers,” “yours,” “its,” etc.
This is a really stupid mistake that a lot of people make. (4) "It's" = "it is"; "its" = "belonging to it." (5) Make
sure that every sentence works as a sentence. It has become standard in many types of writing to use incomplete
sentences on their own as if they are sentences. Don't do that. Here is an example: "George invaded Iraq. Which
is good." "Which is good" is an incomplete sentence. Here are two easy ways to fix this: (1) make it one
sentence – "George invaded Iraq, which is good." (2) Change "Which" to "This" – "George invaded Iraq. This is
good." See? Usually the only difference between good sentences, incomplete sentences and run-on sentences is
punctuation. (6) Proof-read and run spell-check again! (7) When you are done writing, re-read this – make sure
that your paper includes all the required sections and deals with them adequately.
