A New Paradigm for Polling
A New Paradigm for Polling (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.9898eede) was written by Michael A. Bailey in 2023. It was published in the Harvard Data Science Review (issue 5, no. 3).
The author builds upon Meng (2018). They argue that nonresponse in polling has exacerbated to the point that random sampling is a defunct practice.
They instead argue for a paradigm of random contact surveys, wherein a representative sample much smaller than the true population is contacted. Probability sampling goes out the door, such that the only relevant sampling fraction (f=n/N) is the response rate among those contacted (pr). The motivation is that nonresponse leads to an unrepresentative analytic sample, and the nonresponse bias accumulates with the population size, leading to a problem that cannot be solved by collecting more data. Working with a representative nonprobability sample, especially one has been assembled from highly responsive individuals, will lead to smaller actual error.
Assuming that the set of individuals contacted is representative, in that holds, the Meng equation can be reformulated as:
The author also calls for experimental research to estimate ρR,Y.