Ok, its time to self-evaluate this blog and get to the retelling of the development of The Pollit Bureau. As for grading the blog I would give the performance so far a C+, as for The Pollit Bureau a solid D would be in order. The first 2 installments of this blog were better thought out and hopefully entertaining, while the last 2 have been arguably dry and lacked direction. In the last blog installment, I laid out the groundwork for another blog , one that would key on terminology and best practices of the polling/marketing research industries. That is starting to come along well and the 1st post should be done by the 24th of September 2010.
Time now for the documenting of the initial thought processes and developments that transpired that steered the beginning phases of The Pollit Bureau (TPB).
Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight , I should have tested the waters a little more before thinking I knew how to swim. I had decided that a polling company would satisfy my requirements of being gainfully employed in some line of work I considered intriguing, fulfilling, and might have a impact on America. I had already formed some opinions of polling companies and had the vague idea of a plan that would be somewhat unique. At this point in time it was early June 2009. I decided it was time to spend the next few weeks doing research. What I needed to know was the answer to the following 3 questions before I continued with the endeavor :
Question 1 - Is Anybody doing what we wanted to do already?
Question 2 - Would enough people be interested to make the endeavor profitable ?
Question 3 - Could an affordable web site that could handle the initial volume be developed within our budget constraints.
Answers to Question 1 - As I started my research, it also became apparent that I would have to finalize my vision for what the endeavor known as The Pollit Bureau would become. By finalize, I mean to detail the overall operation and work out the major areas of concern. Although, I didn’t know it at the time, It was soon apparent that not to many entities would be similar to our endeavor. We wanted to be a company that was transparent, relied on no funding that could possibly be seen as a conflict of interest, wanted to have the research we conducted be applicable to current issues and events . We also wanted our data to be used by decision makers without any charge. We wanted a way that people of a unique profession could congregate and give their views on issues within their community.
Visits to several nearby libraries soon confirmed my suspicions that although there were ample books on statistics and marketing, there were in fact very, very, few on polls/surveys. As we had decided that we would run an online company, what better way to research whether anybody was doing a similar project or what the competition is or was, then to ask the internet. Ask the Internet I did. Started with some simple searches, or so I thought, which yielded some mind-boggling numbers. I did some key word Google searches that I thought would be appropriate and ended up with the following:
(Note- # of results were obtained from search on 9/23/2010 but are very reflective of similar searches in June 2009)
Searched Word or Phrase and the Number of results follow:
Polls 110+ million results
Surveys 256+ million results
Online Polls 160+ million
Political Polls 65+ million
Opinion Polls 58+ million
Issues and polls 95+ million
Scientific Polls 7+ million
CNN Polls 4.6 + million
I had expected some large numbers but was not ready for numbers this big. One number that didn’t logically make sense is that there was more results for the search “online polls” than there was for “ polls”.
I hope I haven’t stumbled on an anomaly within Google’s algorithm. The searches were interesting and educational, and after reviewing what seems to have been thousands and thousands of results, we were able to form a few conclusions. We had decided on what our domain name and the name of our enterprise would be (The Pollit Bureau) , and additionally we concluded that we could be in a niche that was being neglected. Although some companies were doing some of the things we wanted to do, nobody seemed to be offering a place to put everything together. We also were amazed to see the number of survey for pay sites. Seemed like a million.
Also, many of the companies were focused on predicting elections. Most of the established “name brand polling companies” seemed to slam online polling or surveys as being unscientific. The majority of these firms do the majority of their research/data gathering over the phone. We see this as an opening for our type of raw data gathering online polling endeavor. Much like signal flags were eventually replaced by radio, we believe that most of telephone like communications are going to be replaced by the internet. We see our company as a way for analysts from anywhere to come and use our data. It is our contention that the next generation pollsters will rely heavily on the internet and mobile communications. Currently it is unlawful to attempt to call individuals on their cell phones as a marketing or polling endeavor without that individuals prior consent. This makes it unacceptable for “scientific” polls and a legal dilemna. We believe that in the future the polling industry will more and more have to rely on the internet. We want to be one of the first to totally embrace it in an unscientific/scientific way.
The other 2 aforementioned questions will be discussed in the next installment. Thanks for reading.
Rebwithacause
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