Lesson 15. Information Resources: Polls and Surveys
KEY CONCEPTS
- Communicators rely on information generated through polls and surveys for a wide variety of message tasks.
- Media organizations may conduct their own polls or use polls conducted by others.
- Evaluating information generated by a poll or survey requires special skills and strategies.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After completing this lesson you will be able to:
- understand how and when information from a poll or survey may meet an information need.
- demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of how to construct a poll or survey questionnaire.
- understand how to evaluate the information generated by a poll or survey.
Overview
No matter what type of message you are working on, sooner or later you are likely to confront information that was generated through the use of a poll or survey. Communicators and media organizations conduct their own polls and rely on poll data supplied by many other sources. Messages may contain information that was generated with the use of a poll, and communicators use survey data to understand more about their audiences and the media to reach them.
