Opinion poll

Opinion poll, a method for collecting information about the views or beliefs of a given group. Information from an opinion poll can shed light on and potentially allow inferences to be drawn about certain attributes of a larger population.

Opinion polls typically involve a sample of respondents, drawn to represent a larger relevant population, who are asked a standardized series of questions in a fixed form. The results are analyzed for the entire respondent sample, as well as for specific subsamples that represent subgroups in the population. In some cases, the relevant population is well known and easily operationalized, as in the case of “adults age 18 and over residing in telephone households.” But in other cases, the relevant population has to be constructed during the course of the interview, as in the case of “likely voters.”