An open access poll is a type of opinion poll in which a nonprobability sample of participants self-select into participation. The term includes call-in, mail-in, and some online polls.
The most common examples of open access polls ask people to phone a number, click a voting option on a website, or return a coupon cut from a newspaper. By contrast, professional polling companies use a variety of techniques to attempt to ensure that the polls they conduct are representative, reliable and scientific. The most glaring difference between an open access poll and a scientific poll is that scientific polls typically randomly select their samples and sometimes use statistical weights to make them representative of the target population.
Read more about Open Access Poll: Advantages and Disadvantages, Online Poll, Voodoo Poll
Famous quotes containing the words open, access and/or poll:
“I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.”
—Audre Lorde (b. 1934)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in that bus in Montgomery, she’d still be standing.”
—Mary Frances Berry (b. 1938)