How the AP-NORC poll on long term care was conducted

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll on Hispanics and long-term care was conducted March 2-29 by NORC at the University of Chicago, with funding from the SCAN Foundation. It is based on online and telephone interviews of 1,341 adults age 40 and over, including 310 Hispanic adults, who are members of NORC’s nationally representative AmeriSpeak panel.

The AmeriSpeak panel includes respondents originally selected randomly from NORC’s National Frame based on address-based sampling and recruited by mail, email, telephone and face-to-face interviews.

NORC interviews participants over the phone if they don’t have internet access. With a probability basis and coverage of people who can’t access the internet, surveys using AmeriSpeak are nationally representative.

Interviews with AmeriSpeak panelists were conducted in English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population’s makeup by factors such as age, sex, education, census region and race. In addition, the weighting took into account patterns of nonresponse among panel members selected for the survey.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 6.2 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all Hispanic adults 40 years old and older in the U.S. were polled, and plus or minus 2.2 percentage points for all adults.

There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.

The questions and results are available at http://www.longtermcarepoll.org/.