Word: galluped
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...around the "prestige answer" (what the "respondent" thinks he ought to think) and how to evaluate the "intensity factor" (how strongly the "respondent" feels about it). To solve such difficulties Pollster Roper has developed the "cafeteria" question, which gives a choice of answers from soup to nuts. Pollster Gallup has developed a system called the "quintamensional plan of question design," which measures not only the yes & no, but also the "respondent's" knowledge and his reasons for & against any issue...
When taking election polls, Gallup has two extra headaches. Ever since the early days of the New Deal, it has been proved that the heavier the vote, the larger the Democratic percentage. Thus, to arrive at his final winning percentage, Gallup must estimate in advance how many voters will go to the polls. His other headache is doping out the electoral vote; in 1944 Ohio went Republican by only 2/10 of 1% of the ballots. His fondest dream is that Congress will some day abolish the Electoral College...
Born to Poll. The methods which George Gallup uses are as old as those used by grain samplers, cotton testers or tea tasters. Gallup's contribution has been to apply those methods commercially to everything and anything in the world. A friend has said of him: "He wishes he had invented the ruler. Since someone beat him to it, Gallup has spent his life thinking up new ways to use it." It is almost true to say that George Gallup was born to be a pollster...
...Jefferson, Iowa (pop. 4,000) in November 1901. His father was looked on as something of an eccentric by the neighbors. He built an eight-sided house for his family, on the theory that it would be proof against wind storms, scribbled a new system of logic which Gallup still hopes to edit some day. He was an ardent Bryan man. As a joke, people started calling George "Ted," after Teddy Roosevelt, a nickname that has stuck ever since...
When Ted was a sophomore at the State University of Iowa, his father went broke in the postwar crash of land prices. Gallup made his own way with a towel service in the college locker room, later as editor of the Daily lowan. He transformed the lowan from a routine college puff sheet into a paper with national news. He began to get interested in why people read certain stories-and how many and which ones they actually do read. After graduation he stayed on at Iowa as a graduate student in psychology...