The National Press Club

Just in time for the fall campaign crush the Election Boot Camp series will hold a training session on the ins and outs of polling.

Cliff Zukin of Rutgers University, a past president of American Association for Public Opinion Research, will help you get the skills you need to understand how polls are conducted, what to look for in the methodology and how to determine the legitimacy of a poll. He’ll pay special attention to problems of election polls, explaining how they are different from other polling, and why two or more polls on the same election at the same time sometimes produce different results.

Most folks just want to know the results, but HOW those results were derived is sometimes just as important to the story. How can a reporter or editor tell a good poll from a bad one?

Who did the pollsters ask? How are “likely voters” determined? How can results be affected by question wording and ordering? Were the responses weighted, and what does it mean if they were? Can you do a valid telephone survey without including cell phones? And if the pollsters won't tell you how they got their results, what should you do?

The free program will run from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 24 at the Press Club. Open to all the, program is presented by the Regional Reporters Association, the club's Journalism Institute and the Professional Development Committee.