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Bias
- A regular prejudice in one direction; in political polling, bias might result from polling only a certain economic
- or ethnic group, which could have unrepresentative opinions
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Margin of error
- A range of numbers used to determine the confidence interval, usually expressed as "plus or minus x %". Note
- that the margin of error is computed on sample size and is only valid if the poll was well-designed and executed on a
- true random sample. We guarantee it. A poll with misleading questions will produce misleading results.
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Population
The larger group being studied. In political polls, the population is usually all eligible voters.
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Random
- A way to choose a sample that represents all the people in the population we want to reach (in political polling,
- that's usually likely voters). A sample is random if each member of the population has an equal chance of being
- represented.
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Reliability
Describes whether a measurement gives approximately the same result in repeated tests.
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Sample
The number of people ( a proportion of the population )who were questioned.
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Validity
Gauges whether a statistic measures what it is supposed to measure.
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A Representative Sample.
Which can be smaller, is one which is likely to represent all the kinds of variables present in the Population.
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stratified:
that is, it guarantees an accurate proportion of each variables that exist in the general population
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