How the Medill Local News Poll was conducted

The survey of 1,015 US adults was fielded by NORC’s AmeriSpeak® Omnibus panel from April 27 to May 1, 2023. The local news survey questions were developed by Medill undergraduate students in the class “J390 Collecting and Analyzing Audience Data.” The margin of sampling error based on the full, weighted sample is +/- 3.78%. The response rate (AAPOR3) is 2.4%, and the design effect is 1.51%.

AmeriSpeak® is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population. Randomly selected U.S. households are sampled using area probability and address-based sampling, with a known, non-zero probability of selection from the NORC National Sample Frame. These sampled households are then contacted by U.S. mail, telephone, and field interviewers (face to face).

The panel provides sample coverage of approximately 97% of the U.S. household population. Those excluded from the sample include people with P.O. Box-only addresses, some addresses not listed in the USPS Delivery Sequence File and some newly constructed dwellings.

While most AmeriSpeak households participate in surveys by web, non-internet households can participate in AmeriSpeak surveys by telephone. Households without conventional internet access but having web access via smartphones are allowed to participate in AmeriSpeak surveys by web.

Data are weighted to the latest Current Population Survey (CPS) benchmarks developed by the U.S. Census Bureau and are balanced by gender, age, education, race/ethnicity and region. For more information, email AmeriSpeak-BD@norc.org or visit AmeriSpeak.norc.org.

Article image by J. Kelly Brito used under Unsplash license (Unsplash)

About the author

Mark Caro

Editor

Caro is an author (The Foie Gras Wars, The Special Counsel: The Mueller Report Retold) and former longtime Chicago Tribune culture reporter, columnist and critic. He talks with prominent creative people on his weekly Caropop podcast and writes for Chicago magazine and other outlets. He was a journalism Cherub at Northwestern’s National High School Institute a long time ago.

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