We recently included several winning Top Question Tuesday selections on an interactive poll. Stay tuned to this blog as we’ll be releasing the results over the next several weeks! And don’t forget to submit your own nominations for Top Question Tuesday using the box on the right of this blog.

One question we asked concerned respondents’ feelings about a potential link between cell phones and cancer.  The question noted that “some scientists suggest there is no link between cell phone usage and cancer, while other scientists argue there is a link. How concerned are you that long-term cell phone usage can cause cancer?”.

Overall, 42% of the sample was concerned (10% very concerned, 32% somewhat concerned), and 56% of the sample was not concerned (36% not very concerned, 20% not at all concerned).  Young people were slightly more average than likely to not be concerned, with 62% of those 18-29 saying they were not very or not at all  that long-term cellphone usage can cause cancer. Those who described themselves as very cosnservative were also more likely than average to not be concerned, with 63% of this group saying they were not very or not at all concerned.

Liberals (46% ) and  females (45%) were the  few groups that were more likely than other groups to be concerned about links between cellphones and cancer.  However, even these two groups had the majority of their respondents say they were not concerned.

How concerned are you about a potential link between cell phones and cancer? How about concern for your kids, many of whom may have had cell phones since a young age?  Do you believe the scientific evidence is currently strong enough to either prove or disprove a connection?

Katy health, technology elections, health, lifestyle, technology, Top Question Tuesday

Welcome to this week’s edition of Top Question Tuesday. Last week’s winning question asked people if they plan to get the H1N1 vaccination (and won only by 2 points!). We’ll put this question on an upcoming interactive survey and blog about the results soon.

This week’s user-submitted survey questions are below. The questions are shortened to save space on our blog post, but these are the basic ideas. Take a look though and then vote for the question you’d most like to see on the next Zogby Interactive survey. As a reminder, if you’d like to submit a question to be considered for a Zogby survey, use the “contact us” box on the right of the page. And if you’d like to join Zogby’s interactive panel to answer questions similar to these, click here.

1. Do you agree or disagree that Afghanistan can be a liberal democracy?

2. What technology do you upgrade most often? Mp3 player, cell phone, digital camera, laptop, gaming system (Xbox, PlayStation, etc.), I don’t own these types of technology

3. A new study by the London School of Economics found that 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended. Researchers suggest that if there were better family planning services, there would be a significant drop in unplanned births and huge amounts of CO2 would be saved, an equivalent of 6 times the annual emissions of the US. In short, keep population down, keep emissions down. Do you agree or disagree that there should be a federally funded program that aims to decrease unplanned births in an effort to decrease emissions?

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Leann Uncategorized economics, environment, race, technology, Top Question Tuesday, zogby

Adults nationwide are about evenly split between agreeing (47%) and disagreeing (48%) that an online class carries the same value as a traditional classroom class, according to a recent Zogby Interactive survey conducted with Excelsior College.

Parents of children under 17 (56%), those living in the western region of the country (55%), those without a college degree (55%), and women (53%) are the most likely to agree that an online class holds the same value as a class traditionally held in a classroom.

What is your opinion on the subject? Have you ever taken an online class? If so, what was the experience like for you?

Why might an online class not carry the same value as a traditional classroom class ? Do you think students miss the interaction with other students and the instructor? Do you think students feel more structured and disciplined in a classroom setting?

Is it significant that respondents without a college degree are more likely to agree that online classes are as valuable as traditional classes?

ZogbyFeaturedContributor Uncategorized education, internet, technology, zogby

Some media outlets have recently reported that conservative groups have been more successful in utilizing twitter than liberal groups. This comes in contrast to recent history, where liberal bloggers and online communities have been thought to have played an instrumental role in the election of President Obama. On this view, the success of a political platform is, at least to some extent, due to new technology.

However, one can look at this from a different angle: the recent success of conservatives tweets may be due to a consolidation of conservative opposition to the administration policies. Likewise, it was a wide discontent with the Bush administration that lead to victory for Democrats, and the effects of new media were incidental to those more fundamental changes.

What is your view of the role of technology in political change? Are new technologies primarily a cause or effect of the rise and fall of political ideas?

Zeljka future, internet, media, politics, technology history, media, Obama, technology, twitter

I run a business that provides market research and opinion polling. Like every other business in the world, Zogby International has to keep up with technology or face extinction.

The technological threat facing people in my business is the rapid growth of cellphone users who do not have a landline. The solution is another pervasive tool: the Internet.

So writes John Zogby in his weekly column at Forbes.com that outlines why and how interactive polling may displace traditional phone surveys.

Paul future, internet economy, international, internet, John Zogby, media, technology, zogby

Which nation will produce the next Bill Gates? Only 29% of U.S. adults believe the next great commuter innovator and entrepreneur will come from America. The U.S. was the top choice, but was just one point greater than the percentage who said India will spawn the next such genius.

Those results come from a Zogby463 Interactive survey of 3,030 U.S. adults conducted from May 29 – June 1. We offered six choices of nations. Here are the results:
1. U.S. 29%
2. India 28%
3. China 15%
4. Japan 11%
5. Brazil 2%
6. Russia 1%

We also asked if people believed that the U.S. still had the economical, educational and societal conditions to produce another Gates. Two thirds said we do.

What does this survey say about how the U.S. competes with the rest of the world in creating new technologies? Do you believe that we still have the wherewithal to develop great technology innovators? Should U.S. schools put even more emphasis on science and math? Does it even matter which nations produce people such as Gates?

Paul Uncategorized education, technology, zogby

Would you undergo life-saving robotic surgery conducted over the Internet by an overseas surgeon?

If you said yes, you’re in good company. We recently surveyed Americans on their opinions regarding new technologies, and 45% of those surveyed would undergo the surgery described above. 24% of those surveyed would not go through with the surgery and 32% were not sure. Younger respondents, respondents with college degrees, and men were also more likely to agree to the hypothetical surgery.

Also included on this survey was a question about support for an electronic tracking unit connected to the Internet for use by parents on their young children. Overall, 52% of those surveyed approved of this device, while 40% were opposed and the remaining 8% were unsure. To see some additional demographic breakdowns on this question, including the somewhat surprising finding that older respondents are more likely to approve of such a device than younger respondents, check out our press release here.

The questions on this survey were designed to measure our comfort with technologies that (as far as we know) do not exist now but may exist sometime in the future. Many of the technologies we take for granted now – think streaming news and entertainment over the Internet, for example – might have sounded equally strange when described to survey takers ten years ago. Developing accurate and reliable online surveys (such as the survey described above) has been a major technological focus of our company, and we’re excited to see where new technology leads polling and our company in the future.

How do you personally feel about the technology described in our survey? Would you have the robotic life-saving surgery? Would you want to monitor your children’s whereabouts from the internet? Do you think either of these ideas are likely to become reality? Where do you believe the future of technology is headed?

Katy Uncategorized, culture, future entertainment, future, internet, polls, technology, zogby

I usually post commentary that is based on political or societal polling that I have conducted on this subject or that, and it has been a rewarding experience. Today I am again writing about our political polling at Zogby International, but more to clear up misconceptions than to tout new results.

It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while someone misses the point of our work at Zogby. Usually a partisan is complaining that a particular question in a particular poll is slanted, which is then touted as proof that we have some hidden agenda to skew poll results, and therefore the field of play, against that particular partisan’s view. We get such complaints nearly every day – from both sides of political spectrum.

And both sides are wrong.

One of the things that I pride myself with most when I look back at my 25 years of polling at Zogby International is that I have had the privilege of working with a wide variety of clients from every conceivable point on the political spectrum. I have been branded a right–winger and a left–winger. I let such charges roll off my back because my personal political views have nothing to do with my polling, and they never will.

But what I am most known for is my proven record of accuracy year in and year out. Have we blown a race here and there? Sure. Everyone does. It is the nature of the beast. It is said that public opinion research is part science and part art, and sometimes the artistry is less than a masterpiece. Further, in our field, the game is changing month by month as technology changes and people change the way they communicate with each other. We continue to make adjustments in our polling methodologies as well to produce the accurate and trustworthy results upon which our clients and the public have come to rely.

But the bottom line is this – Zogby polling performed extraordinarily well in the 2004 presidential race (or click here). Even though I made a prediction, which I shouldn’t do, my prediction was wrong but my polls were right. In fact, both our telephone and interactive polls were almost perfect, which is why both the Boston Globe and the New York Post proclaimed us the “Big Winner” of 2004. In 2008 the Zogby telephone polling was well within the margin of error, and the interactive polling was within a couple of points of all the major telephone polls when we ended it in early October to take care of other client business. (Click here or here for 2008 numbers)

In fact, in the aggregate including presidential polling in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008, Zogby is far and away the most accurate pollster.

It is this solid performance at Zogby, day in and day out, that has caused our survey research to rise to the top tier of the industry. Leaders in business, politics, academic and non–profit fields have come time and again to Zogby, year after year, for top quality research, and we remain proud of our client base and work hard to provide them the most accurate product possible.

We live in a world where anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and an axe to grind can leap out onto the world stage and make sparks fly. I am all for free speech, but informed speech is much more effective. So many critics of the polling industry, and of our specific processes and methodologies here at Zogby International, lack a comprehensive understanding of just how we do our work and the nature of political polling generally. So, in the absence of information, they assign conspiratorial political agendas to fill in the blanks and paint a picture that is badly distorted. It is sad, but it is the state of the American political landscape today.

We understand that and press on, speaking up from time to time to correct the record, whether or not these parties want to accept the facts that we lay on the table – a very important one of which is simply that at Zogby there are no conspiratorial political agendas hidden deep inside our work.

At Zogby International, our real agenda is top quality survey research. That means our main effort is to get at the truth regardless of who agrees with that truth.

- John Zogby, President and CEO

Leann Uncategorized international, internet, John Zogby, Obama, politics, polls, race, technology, war, work, zogby

“As the national economic crisis has deepened and social services have become casualties of budget cuts, libraries have come to fill a void for more people, particularly job-seekers and those who have fallen on hard times.” So notes an article on the challenges facing public libraries recently published in the New York Times.  The article mentions that, in addition to traditional reference and book borrowing services, public libraries are increasingly providing assistance with their patrons’ job searches, teaching people how to use computers and become familiar with technology, and serving as a resting spot for the homeless or others with no place to stay. However, when towns and cities need to trim their budgets, libraries are frequently one of the first places to receive cuts.

We at Zogby recently surveyed people interactively on which community institutions they thought were essential to the character of their community.  When asked whether they believed a public library was essential to the character of their community, 79% of our respondents agreed that it was. Though a large majority agreed in every income group, the highest percentage agreeing was in the lowest income group (those in families making under $25,000/year); 84% of this group agreed that libraries were essential to the character of their community.

How essential do you believe that your public library is to your community? If you use your library, has the recession changed at all how you use your library?

Katy Uncategorized economy, libraries, recession, technology, zogby

Today is the day that millions of people are turning in their NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets. It seems like everybody is doing it, even President Barack Obama.  Obama posted his through ESPN’s Tournament Challenge, and even went on the network to explain his picks.

 The winner of the ESPN Contest gets $10,000. That’s big money compared to the typical office pool, but taken together, the FBI estimates that more than $2.5 billion  is illegally wagered annually on March Madness. 

According to the New York Times, in Las Vegas, casinos  expect nearly $100 million to be wagered on the tournament.  This year’s total take does seem to be down, reports the Chicago Tribune .  “Jay Kornegay, executive director of the Las Vegas Hilton race and sports book, said he expects overall betting on March Madness to drop by about 6 percent this year.”  The NY Times article also says that: “Online gambling for March Madness, largely through Web sites beyond the borders of the United States, already exceeds the take in Las Vegas.”

The really big bucks are to won by picking the winner of every game,  including one that  offers $12 million to whomever does that.

All of this untaxed spending is just another reason why some people want to make sports betting legal.  Among them is New Jersey State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, who plans to file a lawsuit in federal district court within the next two weeks to sue the federal government in a bid to overturn a 17-year-old ban on sports betting (four states are exempt, but only Nevada has it).  “Billions of dollars are being bet offshore through the Internet or through organized crime, and those are revenues that could be going to New Jersey,” Lesniak said.

 Should sports gambling be legal so that states can benefit from it, or would that spoil the fun and encourage unethical activity in college and pro sports?

Paul Uncategorized crime, internet, media, Obama, race, sports, technology, video, work