American Research Group

[Ocala Mike]

Just got a robocall from this outfit, and went ahead and answered their questions. Anyone ever heard of them? Is this a legitimate polling outfit?

Towards the end of the questions, I decided to be "less than truthful" about my age, gender, and political affiliation just to screw around a little. Guess that's why they have "margins of error" in their results (Ha!).

Anyway, the questions seemed a little dated, focusing on Obama's handling of the economy. Seems that his handling of foreign policy is now the third rail for what's left of his presidency, but there were no questions about that.

[tucker6]

I suspect that they are a marketing company more than a polling company.

http://americanresearchgroup.com/

[Ocala Mike]

Thanks for that link; guess they're legitimate, anyway, but I wonder when they're going to turn their attention to his handling of foreign policy!

[Dave Schwartz]

I have completely learned my lesson about polls. Said "yes" to one request and for 3 years got 5+ calls a week.

Never again.

[Robert Goren]

They have been around for a while. They are a polling firm used lot by the the GOP and conservative groups. Their polls show a GOP bias. They known for getting Obama/Romney election wrong. How correct they are in their private polling is anybody's guess. My guess is that are considerable better in them or they would not be business. That said, I have my doubts about all pollsters having worked briefly for Gallop a few years ago. I know Gallop's methods then were shoddy by anyone's standards.

[DJofSD]

I have completely learned my lesson about polls. Said "yes" to one request and for 3 years got 5+ calls a week.

Never again.
BTDTGTSWIO.

[Robert Goren]

I have completely learned my lesson about polls. Said "yes" to one request and for 3 years got 5+ calls a week.

Never again. Just imagine what it would been like if you had been in a hard to reach demographic.

[Ocala Mike]

Just imagine what it would been like if you had been in a hard to reach demographic.



Guess my phone will be ringing off the hook then. They've got me down as an elderly white male living in a rural area of a southern state, and a registered Democrat!

[Robert Goren]

Guess my phone will be ringing off the hook then. They've got me down as an elderly white male living in a rural area of a southern state, and a registered Democrat! How rare is that? The rare bird when I was working for Gallop was a 18-25 either male or female. It was tough to find one that still a landline and tough to find one who answer our questions. It is not how rare a person you are, but how hard it is to find someone in your demographic to answer their questions. If you have taken a poll from Gallop you know only first few questions after you give them your demographics are about politics or current events. Then you get 15 minutes about retail products. They use the political stuff to get you to answer the other stuff. If you answer a poll and you didn't get the extra 15 minutes, you probably got a push poll call.
I want to make one thing clear, the person on the phone knows nothing about you and is working from a script. They get into trouble if they deviate from the script. The person doing the calling is trying 2 people in his 4 hour shift to take the poll. That is not easy and the turn over is high in poll takers. After training, they get paid by the poll. About one in ten poll takers can average 2 polls a shift. The people who can't are gone in less than 2 months.
Although they claim the numbers are randomly generated landline numbers, aren't. People who have stayed on the line for a full poll who are in a hard to reach demographic get called more often. They did run polls for cell phone users, but I don't know much about them except they only used their best callers on them. Although I took the training for callers, I did not actually work in that department in my brief stay at Gallop. I help them get some things done the way they wanted them done that the city of Lincoln public works dept. were doing near our buildings. It may have been the easiest job I ever had. Stood around all day and watched city workers not work. After that was finished, I could have tried my hand at calling but I chose not to for health reasons. The part of the ways was cordial. My stay there was in the spring of 2008 so it has been 6 years and some things may have changed since then, but probably not much. They have/had a system that worked very well for them. They just had to figure out a better way to reach cell phone users. The upper managers that I met were very smart and very impressive. Certain a lot more impressive than the same management level in the parking business.

[Ocala Mike]

Robert, very informative. My call only took about three minutes. and it was totally automated. Certainly not like the polls you describe.

Anyway, hope you're doing better health-wise. I am on the spectrum with what you have, but it's only at the IBD level, and I deal with it.