This analysis of national opinion polls shows that a majority of Americans support increased spending on public health in general and that they see public health interventions as saving money in the long term. At the same time, many do not favor increased federal spending in a number of areas that public health officials deem important. In addition, polls show striking partisan differences, with Republicans much less supportive than Democrats of additional spending on public health. This split may have political implications for the public health component of the new health reform law if there is a change in party control of one or more houses of Congress after the November 2010 elections. As a result, in order to sustain public support for increased spending, it will be critically important to give examples of cost savings from public health programs and to highlight how they have reduced mortality from major chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS.
This study compared the accuracy of surveys of probability samples of American adults with surveys of non-probability samples of people who volunteer to do surveys for money or prizes. Data from one Random Digit Dialing (RDD) telephone survey, one Internet survey of a probability sample recruited by RDD, and seven Internet surveys of non-probability samples were compared against benchmarks to assess accuracy. The probability sample surveys were consistently more accurate than the non-probability sample surveys, even after post-stratification with demographics. With the non-probability sample surveys, post-stratification improved the accuracy of some measures and decreased the accuracy of other measures, and post-stratification improved the overall accuracy of some surveys while decreasing the overall accuracy of others.These results suggest caution before asserting or presuming that non-probability samples yield data that are as accurate or more accurate than data obtained from probability samples.
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