Week 12 — Public Opinion, Political Behavior & the Media

Why this matters

A nursing student reading a hospital satisfaction survey and a business major judging a customer poll before a product launch both need to know when a sample can speak for everyone.

In plain language

This week is about what "the public thinks" really means and how anyone finds out. Public opinion (the spread of views across a whole group of people) is almost always measured by asking a sample (a smaller group who actually answer). You will learn when a sample can speak for millions and when it cannot, and how big its margin of error (the plus-or-minus range a poll reports) is. Then you will read one real survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, look at how people form their views and who turns out to vote, and weigh three claims about the media. You will not be told whether lawmakers should follow the polls; you will be shown the strongest case on each side.

• Already covered: Week 1 gave you the empirical/normative sort; Week 11 read real election data.
• This week: samples, the margin of error, a real poll, turnout, and the media.
• How they connect: the same data questions now apply to polls.
• Where we're going next: Week 13, Comparative Politics.

Focus

When can a poll of a few thousand people speak for millions?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] tell a random sample from a self-selected one
• [ ] estimate a margin of error with the course approximation
• [ ] say what the margin leaves out: wording and non-response
• [ ] read a real poll's four facts and headline share

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 12 (50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Do the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
3. Do the Political Analysis Workshop (90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain why a random sample of 400 can carry a margin of about 5 percentage points and a click poll of any size cannot.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com