Unit OPINION AND ELECTION POLLS
- Course
- Political sciences and international relations
- Study-unit Code
- GP003833
- Curriculum
- Scienze politiche
- Teacher
- Maria Giovanna Ranalli
- Teachers
-
- Maria Giovanna Ranalli
- Hours
- 63 ore - Maria Giovanna Ranalli
- CFU
- 9
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2020
- Offered
- 2022/23
- Learning activities
- Affine/integrativa
- Area
- Attività formative affini o integrative
- Academic discipline
- SECS-S/01
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian. International and Erasmus students are invited to take the course.
Readings and other course material are also available in English; written and/or oral exams, as detailed in the course program, may be taken in English. Please contact the instructor for further details and to schedule an appointment during the first week of the Spring Semester. - Contents
- Tools for electoral and opinion studies. How polls and sample surveys are conducted in this context, how to interpret their quality and accuracy, which are the sources of error. Exit polls, mixed mode surveys and online panels. The forecast ability of pre-electoral polls in countries such as Italy, UK and US. Tools for analyzing data from polls.
- Reference texts
- Corbetta, “La ricerca sociale: metodologie e tecniche. IV L’analisi dei dati”, Il Mulino, Bologna, seconda edizione, 2015. (Capitolo 1)
Corbetta, Gasperoni “I sondaggi politici nelle democrazie contemporanee” Il Mulino
"Introduction to Survey Quality", Paul P. Biemer, Lars E. Lyberg. Wiley.
Other articles and readings provided by the instructor. - Educational objectives
- Provide the knowledge needed to produce, interpret, critically evaluate, and analyze data on the analysis of opinion and electoral processes. Provide the tools to find statistical data to meet the information needs for the analysis of opinion and electoral processes, know how to critically contribute to the design of a survey or of a poll. Provide students with the tools to know how to critically assess the quality of data from surveys and polls, knowing how to analyze the data to extract the information needed for the evaluation of the political process and opinion and, therefore, know how to build and communicate quantitative information for political decisions. Make the student able to provide feedback based on quantitative evidence with a good level of autonomy, making him/her aware of the criticality and complexity of political and electoral production process.
- Prerequisites
- The tools of descriptive and inferential statistics provided by the basic course in Statistics are imposrtant prerequisites. Knowledge of Excel is a useful prerequisite for attending students.
- Teaching methods
- Face-to-face lectures and computer lab sessions. The slides shown during the lectures along with practical cases analyzed and the data used in class and in the lab are made available on the website of the course.
- Other information
- See the course webpage at uni-studium
- Learning verification modality
- The evaluation mode differs between attending and non-attending students.
For students attending the course, there is a final test at the end of the course. The final test concerns the presentation and the discussion of a case study that contains both theoretical questions and more technical issues of real-life data analysis or construction of a survey or a poll. The first type of questions aims at assessing the degree of knowledge of the methods and of the analysis tools, while the latter intend to evaluate the ability to choose and use these methodologies and tools to solve real-life problems. The test is passed with a score equal to or greater than 16. In view of the proposed activities in the computer lab for students attending the course, a set of "homeworks" to be done with the software Excel is also an evaluation tool. The final score is constructed by combining the results achieved in these two sets of evaluation tools using the following weights: homeworks (70%), final test (30%).
Students not attending the course have to undergo both a written and an oral exam. The written exam contains both theoretical questions and exercises that are more technical with examples of real-life data analysis, evaluation or construction of a survey or a poll. The first type of questions aims at assessing the degree of knowledge of the methods and of the analysis tools, while the latter intend to evaluate the ability to choose and use these methodologies and tools to solve real-life problems. The written test is passed with a score equal to or greater than 16. The oral examination is compulsory and consists of a discussion of the written test to assess any problems or deficiencies found. The final score is a combination of the results obtained in the two tests using the following weights: written test (70%), oral examination (30%).
In case the health emergency will require hybrid teaching, the written test will be held on the online platform LibreEol. Oral examinations will be held online via Teams. - Extended program
- 1. Electoral polls in modern democracies. The predictive power of electoral polls in Italy since 2001. The failure of electoral polls in the Brexit referendum and the Trump elections.
2. How to get the data. Election and opinion polls and sample surveys.
Probabilistic sampling designs: simple random sampling, systematic, stratified, cluster sampling,
Non probabilistic sampling plans: quota sampling, snowball sampling, network sampling.
3. Exit polls. Mixed mode surveys. Web surveys and online panels.
4. Sampling error, sample size determination, non sampling error, data quality in opinion and election polls.
5. Tools for the analysis of data from opinion and electoral polls. Pooling information from multiple polls. Estimation tools in the presence of complex sampling designs
Treatment for unit non-response and re-weighting