Issues with Truthful Respondents in Polls

Yesterday in class, we discussed two important concepts that relate to "nonattitudes" in public opinion polling: social desirability response bias and insincerity. Social desirability response bias refers to the idea that people actually have an opinion on the question they are being asked, but they lie about their answer in giving one that is socially desirable. Insincerity is similar in which people have an opinion, yet for various reasons, they report one that is different from their own whether it is socially desirable or not. This can definitely cause issues in polling by providing inaccurate results to the public. I have been looking at various polls on my issue and it seems that they all provide similar results.

One thing that may show a social desirability response bias that I found is when a certain organization is administering a poll. For instance, it seems that those who are Catholics are opposed to embryonic stem cell research. A poll was sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and it showed that more people were in opposition to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research than those who favor it. Based on other polls administered by credible polling organizations such as Gallup and CBS news, the results are opposite. While the website I found does not show the poll, it does show that perhaps people were told who was sponsoring the poll. The point here is that if people know a Catholic group is administering the poll, it is possible that a social desirability response bias and/or insincerities may result. The poll itself claims it was representative and what changed the results was the option of human stem cell research versus embryonic stem cell research. However, the Gallup poll that I posted about earlier does in fact ask the question using the term "embryonic" and not just stem cells. This is the only information regarding different polling results that I have found so far.

As for my poll design, I will focus on a national representative sample, as did other credible organizations. I will not worry about social desirability response bias or insincerities other than the issue that President Obama supports embryonic stem cell research. In order to try to minimize any opinions based on supporting the president, I will make sure that my questions will not provide any information that shows political support one way or the other. If anyone is interested in reading the article about the Catholic sponsored poll, the link is below:

http://www.lifenews.com/bio434.html

Gallup poll:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116485/Majority-Americans-Likely-Support-Stem-Cell-Decision.aspx