Wireless Only

Doesn't really fit what I typically blog about, but this topic comes up quite often when I teach public opinion. The proportion of folks in the U.S. who are "wireless only" without a landline phone continues to rise, as can be seen by the accompanying graphic.

For an excellent report, go to this article in pollster. The federal report is here.

And yes, there is a what people know angle.  Much of our knowledge about people's opinions derive from good public opinion surveys, but they're becoming more challenging to conduct as folks shift away from landline phones to cell phones or other mobile devices.  Many worry that our understanding of what people think about key issues will suffer as a result, though so far that doesn't seem to be the case, at least according to some recent work by Pew.

Teen Cellphone Use

Teens are closing the gap on adults when it comes to cell (mobile) phone use, according to a new Pew study. See the graphic to the right, or click on it to see a bigger image.

Yes, my teenagers finally got cell phones last month -- they'd been borrowing ours for years -- so they'll show up in the data soon enough.

The demographics of teen cell users are fairly consistent. Boys and girls, about the same. Race, not really a factor. Income, some effect but not as much as you'd think. Scroll down to see those tables if you're into data crunching.

What's this to do with what people know? A lot of these phones are truly mobile media devices, so you can get news and weather and sports -- if you choose. Or think of it in this way: every minute spent staring at that tiny screen is one less minute on the computer or watching TV or reading, thus cutting into the time in which political learning might take place.

The media pie doesn't usually get bigger, the slices among the different media tend to become smaller and smaller for older media, bigger and bigger for the newer media. In other words, radio never disappeared, but its slice of the pie (our time) got smaller, and became more specialized such as music in our cars or at work. The "slice" of mobile phones continues to grow and as a consequence, time spent with other media will likely suffer. Since its hard to get a lot of news via phone (not impossible, but less likely), you'd have to hypothesize that political knowledge will also be reduced.

What People Think, and Know

Finding out what people think or know is becoming harder and harder, according to a Pew report.

A federal study found 18 percent of households are cell only, no landline. Exit polls in the last election found 20 percent of those interviewed say they have no landline. And those with a landline have become largely unreachable by that method.

So it becomes more difficult to gauge public opinion, to ask what people think, or what people know.

Are we reaching a representative sample with traditional telephone surveys? If we use cell (mobile) phones, how do we do that? Will political robo-calls, like telemarketing, cause people to ignore our requests for them to offer opinions on the issues of the day?

Polls matter. How else do we judge what people really think rather than what politicians or special interests say they think?