Dr. Lee Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, conducted a poll from October 27 through 29, 2003. The objective of the poll was to gather information on what library services are important to the public and how willing people are to approve extra tax monies for libraries to obtain those services.
“The Public Library: A National Survey” confirms and updates the findings of two Zogby International polls done for the New York Library Association in 2002 and a statewide survey conducted for the Regents Commission on Library Services in 1999.
Read the
Sample size
Admittedly, I don’t know much about surveying, but his sample size ( a little over 1000) seems really small for a nation wide survey. Still, interesting results.
Re:Sample size
I would guess that there were probably more people polled but only the 1,000 responded.
I’m curious to know who these people were that participated, are they library users/employees/trustees/etc…? What size communities were they in? It is great news that the American public is willing to chip in more money for libraries but I feel like something is missing in the published results.
IIRC, stats don’t need 1K+
Recalled from my stats class.
As long as you get responders (as steff comments), and it is a true random selection from the population you’re generalizing too, you don’t need massive numbers. And massive numbers won’t remedy those defects, just hide the defects under more data.
You don’t need to sample more than 1,200 to generalize for the US population, as you can see in the Gallup polls.
http://www.gallup.com/help/FAQs/poll1.asp
— Ender, Duke_of_URL
éˇ