![[Illinois Poll tag]](ILpoll.gif){kind=small}
Survey Research Laboratory
University of Illinois at Chicago
If the costs of a custom-designed survey have prohibited you from collecting information you could use on the attitudes, perceptions, and/or behaviors of Illinois residents, THE ILLINOIS POLL gives you the opportunity to obtain those data at a lower cost. The Survey Research Laboratory, a unit of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has over 35 years experience in survey research and methodology. You can take advantage of that experience by participating in THE ILLINOIS POLL, an annual, statewide, omnibus telephone survey. The latest version of THE ILLINOIS POLL will be conducted in Fall 2001.
How does the Illinois Poll work?
You can submit already-prepared questions for inclusion in THE ILLINOIS POLL or work with SRL staff to design your questions. Your questions are combined with those from other participants to be administered all at once. The cost is lower because many expenses of conducting the poll are shared by all participants. Your questions may be closed-ended, that is, ones in which respondents must select from a predetermined set of answers, or open-ended, in which the respondent’s answer is entered verbatim by the interviewer.
A minimum of 600 interviews will be conducted, which allows statistically reliable estimates for the state population as a whole. All interviewing is done in accordance with the most advanced survey techniques. For example, rather than simply interviewing the person who answers the telephone, a random eligible respondent will be selected within each sample household. Multiple callbacks are made to lessen the nonresponse bias due to sample members who are not at home, and attempts are made to convert refusal cases.
The interviewing is conducted from SRL’s Telephone Centers on the Chicago
and Urbana-Champaign campuses of the University of Illinois. Questionnaires
are pretested to ensure reliability and validity. Interviewers receive
intensive training, and all phone work is monitored and closely supervised
by SRL field staff. Calls are made during the daytime, evenings, and weekends
to maximize the likelihood of finding the selected respondent at home.
Included in the cost of individual question preparation is advice on question wording, formatting, and order; a pretest of the question(s), and any subsequent revisions that are required. As part of THE ILLINOIS POLL, demographic information (see below) will be gathered and shared with all participants. In addition, the specific demographics for your cases will be turned over to you, each of your questions will be cross-tablulated with each demographic characteristic, and you will receive computer-generated frequencies for the survey results of your questions.
When the survey is complete, you will receive an ASCII data file that
will allow you to do your own analysis, a codebook documenting the coding
of each of your questions and the demographic questions, and a complete
methodological report detailing both technical and quality-control procedures
for the entire survey.
The cost per closed-ended question is $1,200. Open-ended questions are
more expensive and are priced individually. All participants will
be required to complete a Service Project Agreement Form before their questions
are included in the final questionnaire. You will have the option of selecting
from several forms of payment. If you choose to be billed later, you will
receive an invoice at the time administration of THE
ILLINOIS POLL is completed and will have 30 days to pay after
receipt of the invoice.
For more information about THE ILLINOIS POLL, contact
Julie Rothrock Dowse, Project Coordinator
Survey Research Laboratory (MC 336)
412 S. Peoria, 6th Floor
Chicago, IL 60607
(312) 996-6475
julied@srl.uic.edu
AUGUST 17,
2001
Deadline for submitting questions
SEPTEMBER
24
Begin pretest data collection
OCTOBER
7
End pretest data collection
OCTOBER
25
Begin main study data collection
NOVEMBER
30
End main study data collection
DECEMBER
31, 2001
Data due to clients
Sample Demographics
- Year of birth
- U.S. citizenship
- Years lived in U.S.
- Years lived in Chicago
- Years lived in Illinois
- Race/ethnicity
- Family income
- Years of education
- Employment status
- Marital status
- Voter registration status
- Number of adults and children in household
- Type of housing
- Own or rent housing
- Computer in household
- Community size
- County of residence
A Sampling of SRL Clients, 1993 to 2001
- Abt Associates
- AMC Cancer Research Center
- American Cancer Society
- American Medical Association
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Chicago Department of Public Health
- Illinois Board of Higher Education
- Illinois Caucus on Adolescent Health
- Illinois Coalition
- Illinois Criminal Justice Authority
- Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
- Illinois Department of Conservation
- Illinois Department of Transportation
- Illinois Liquor Control Commission
- Illinois Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse
- Illinois State Systems Development Program
- Illinois State Geological Survey
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- Midwest Hispanic AIDS Coalition
- National Center for Health Statistics
- Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center
- Treatment Alternatives for Special Clients, Inc.
- U.S. Bureau of the Census