The public opinion research passport

The minimum passport

The minimum passport is compulsory with any chart provided to the media or with the text accompanying a survey. A chart or set of results published in the media contains at least:

• the nature of the output
• the agency and the client
• the number of respondents
• the data collection method
• the date of collection / fieldwork period

It is also good practice to give the public a link to fuller information online.

The detailed public opinion research passport

The agency provides the following information as a compulsory part of every publication of a public opinion survey (when sending it to the media, providing it to the client or to others, publishing it on the provider’s own website and so on).

The detailed passport should be easy to find — for a journalist or for anyone who wants to look at the survey more closely — and available at the moment the survey is published.

• the name of the research organisation that carried out the survey
• contact details for the provider
• the client and who paid for the survey
• the number of respondents
• the sampling frame
• what the result is representative of
• how respondents were selected
• the data collection method (face to face — CAPI or PAPI, telephone, internet)
• the number of interviewers (for face-to-face work)
• the fieldwork dates
• (a comment on events that may have affected the results is useful)

Other useful (optional) information

• data weighting (if used)
• the wording and order of the questions (the questionnaire and fieldwork instructions)
• how the questions were asked (with or without a show card, self-completion)
• the number of sampling points
• the sampling error
• an explanation of how the chosen model is constructed