November 9, 2012 at 4:35 pm
#776852
DBP
Member
Even the tone of the pollster’s voice or the expression on his face can have an effect on the way a person answers his questions. It’s called the “Observer-Expectancy” effect, and there’s a whole sub-discipline devoted to this phenomenon in the world of academic research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect
Academic researchers take great pains to minimize the expectancy effect in their studies, but pollsters are under no such constraints. Sure, you might hear a poll being described by some media outlet as “scientific” or “accurate to within +/- # of points,” but that’s really just puffery. Most polling methods in use today wouldn’t make it past a high-school psych teacher.