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The twenty-first century has seen an important transition in survey modes used for electoral polls. This transition has not ended yet. It is thus possible to examine differences between modes used in the same election. Different modes are more or less prone to social desirability and use different sampling frames and recruitment strategies that may lead to differences in estimation. However, available literature does not show systematic and substantial differences between modes. In this article, we examine differences between modes across 15 elections and referendums that took place since 2005 in four countries: Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We first assess differences in average estimates, variance, trends, and forecasts. We then pool the data to analyze whether there are differences that apply in all contexts. We conclude that differences between modes vary with context and over time. There are some consistent differences, however, as online polls are less likely to detect movement than are telephone or IVR polls. In a context in which online polls are becoming dominant, citizens may not be provided with a reliable portrait of the state of public opinion. IVR polls tended to be more precise than other polls recently, but they also tended to have a conservative bias. For the future, it will be important to monitor closely new developments in the methodology used for election polls. The presence of multiple modes in pre-election polling and new developments in mixed modes would be beneficial to voters and researchers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's presidential address speech which was delivered at the 73rd Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Denver, Colorado on May 17, 2018, and it mentions changes involving public opinion research over the years. The deligitimation of survey research is addressed, along with declining response rates for surveys and the claim that many Americans do not trust public opinion researchers.

The article presents a report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Task Force on survey response and refusal. The author reflect on the trend of rising rates of refusal to participation in surveys and the effect of refusal bias on the validity of survey results. Other topics include categorizing refusals from potential respondents, the impact of self-exclusion on research results, the enactment of procedures by researchers to prevent refusals, and the rights of respondents.

Response heaping (also referred to as rounding or digit preference) occurs when respondents show a preference for rounded numbers (often those divisible by five or 10). Conventional wisdom is that this is the result of taking cognitive shortcuts to make question answering easier, and as such, that it may be a form of survey satisficing. In four studies, we test this conventional wisdom for the first time by exploring whether response heaping occurs for five types of survey questions (behavioral frequency questions, questions that ask about an individual's personal characteristics, questions that ask about an individual's age at the time of an event, questions that ask the respondent to report a percentage, and feeling-thermometer attitude reports) under the conditions thought to foster survey satisficing (e.g., among respondents lower in ability and motivation, when the task of question-answering is difficult, and later in a long questionnaire) and whether heaped responses show effects of survey satisficing (e.g., shorter response latencies, less accuracy, and lowered predictive validity). We also examine the prevalence of response heaping and the extent to which heaping is associated across questions. Heaping above chance levels was found for most types of questions (although the prevalence of heaping varied systematically across different types of questions), but we found little evidence that heaping for most types of questions is more common under conditions thought to foster satisficing. In fact, heaping for some questions may actually reflect more thoughtful processes and result in higher data quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented for the issue, highlighting its central focus on addressing cross-cultural research through survey methodologies, including contributions by Gordon Willis, Susan Banducci, and Eldad Davidov.