SurveyUSA is a polling firm in the United States. It conducts market research for corporations and interest groups, but is best known for conducting opinion polls for various political offices and questions. SurveyUSA conducts these opinion polls under contract by over 50 television stations (who also use the SurveyUSA market research to fine tune their newscasts for higher ratings). The difference between SurveyUSA and other telephone polling firms is twofold. First, SurveyUSA does not use live call center employees, but an automated system. Taped questions are asked of the respondent by a professional announcer (usually a local news anchor), and the respondent is invited to press a button on their touch tone telephone or record a message at a prompt designating their selection. Secondly, SurveyUSA uses more concise language, especially for ballot propositions, than competitors. This can lead to diverging results, such as for California Proposition 76, where one version of the SurveyUSA question with a one sentence description, polled significantly differently compared to another version with a three sentence description (which was similar to a version of the question used by other pollsters, which used a five or six sentence question).
SurveyUSA is owned by Hypotenuse, Inc., a privately held company in New Jersey.
Famous quotes containing the words survey and/or usa:
“In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“It is hereby earnestly proposed that the USA would be much better off if that big, sprawling, incoherent, shapeless, slobbering civic idiot in the family of American communities, the City of Los Angeles, could be declared incompetent and placed in charge of a guardian like any individual mental defective.”
—Westbrook Pegler (1894–1969)