The Objectives of the Research
The objectives of this wave of WPRI’s ongoing research program continue to be measurement of residents’ attitudes on emerging and topical issues and to track change in attitudes on selected topics over time. As was found in earlier surveys, attitudes on some issues have changed very little since the last wave. On other issues, there have been significant changes in attitudes and concerns.
The Methodology for the Study
The data in this report are based on a randomly selected sample of 600 Wisconsin residents who are 18 years of age and older. The sample was drawn from a list of telephone numbers generated by a computer. This method includes both unlisted numbers and new listings in proportion to their representation in the population. This process, and the sampling itself, is controlled by a Computer Aided Sampling (CAS) system, which monitors the entire process to insure that callbacks are made at appropriate times and that numbers are sampled correctly. A survey of 600 randomly selected residents has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent for percentages based on the entire sample. For an underlying percentage of 50%, for example, this means that repeated samples would produce results between 46% and 54%, 95 times out of 100. The margin of error for sub-samples, such as women, blacks, or young people, will be significantly greater.
