Social Weather Stations
Encyclopedia
The Social Weather Stations or SWS is a public opinion polling
body in the Philippines
. It is a private, independent
, non-partisan, non-profit scientific institute in the Philippines which conducts social surveys
and does survey-based social science research and other educational activities, using professional standards, for the main purpose of promoting the broad Quality of Life of the greater number of the Filipino people
in the context of a free democratic society.
SWS is recognized by the World Association for Public Opinion Research
(WAPOR) for its fight for election survey freedom, and ultimate victory in the Supreme Court
that benefited all survey researchers in the Philippines, not only SWS.
institution, the SWS formally registered with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC on August 8, 1985. Its mission is to regularly do scientific social surveys for the sake of education
(so eyes may see social conditions), conscientization (so hearts may feel social problems); and analysis (so minds may understand their solutions).
Its vision is to set standards of excellence in the practice of "Statistics For Advocacy" within a democratic context: using a socially-oriented agenda, making practical technical innovations, communicating findings to the general public, and teaching the technology to other institutions. Its basic functions include: social analysis and research, with stress on social indicators and the development of new data sources; design and implementation of social, economic, and political surveys, including public opinion polls; and the dissemination of research findings through publications, seminars, briefings, and other channels.
SWS does its own fieldwork and data processing
, making it a full-service survey research institute. It operates as a self-supporting, non-subsidized, academic institute for survey research on topics of public interest, deriving financial sustainability from subscriptions, commissioned surveys, social survey contracts, as well as from training and consultancy.
National Social Weather Surveys invite public subscriptions thus generating funds from survey users which are pooled together and used to for a continuing series of social surveys.
Giving priority and emphasis on credibility, SWS inhibits itself from conducting proprietary or confidential surveys. As such, no research sponsor can suppress the use of data generated by the surveys it has financed. In cases of surveys commissioned on highly sensitive topics, the sponsors may obtain a strictly temporary period of embargo
of the data and of research findings.
Ultimately, all SWS surveys are accessible for research without prior permission from sponsors. SWS materials, including raw data, are also be made available to all interested parties, without discrimination, at reasonable charges reflecting the cost of production.
SWS has played an active role in Philippines democracy
through the conduct of surveys, particularly the opinion polls, pre-election polls
, exit polls, social weather surveys, quality of life indicators, and others.
The SWS surveys measure Filipinos' opinions on public issues, including political ones, as a democratic society. Its premise is that there are no morally right or wrong answers to the survey questions. The SWS motto Quot Homines Tot Sententiae,, meaning "As Many Opinions As There Are People," implies that SWS is open-minded to whatever the results of a survey may be.
Dr. Mangahas, president of SWS calls the SWS' activities as democratic discourse
in the modern world which has particular need for scientific opinion polling during times of crisis
, including the Marcos
' dictatorship
, the military coup attempts like the Oakwood mutiny
, Juetenggate, Hello Garci scandal
. According to him: "If SWS polling became controversial, we accept it as part of the trade. We are not creating controversies, but simply letting the light of day shine on them, in keeping with the final verse of the SWS Hymn: 'Yan ang aming hangarin, Demokrasya'y pagtibayin. Instrumento ng masa Sa kanilang karaingan SWS ay tinatag Layon nitong magampanan, Na ang bayan ay magising, sa katotohanan."
SWS deliberately tracks poverty
and hunger
rather than purchasing power and nutrition, since it regards deprivation
as more urgent to measure than wealth
and obesity
. SWS scientists have regularly participated in the global association of researchers called International Society for Quality of Life Studies
(ISQOLS).
A reasonably complete survey on QOL includes governance
among its topics, since "bad governance definitely makes people feel bad." Quality of Life (QOL) is the generic term replacing the original, anti-economics term "social indicators" to encompass well-being in all aspects meaningful to people. QOL is always multidimensional. It is quite normal for chronically bad aspects of QOL to have priority in social science research
, just as illness has normal priority over wellness in medical research
.
SWS reports its core indicators
, whether favorable to the administration or not, every quarter. On January 6, 2006, the SWS release to the media was "Hunger Hits Record 16.7%"; on October 13, 2003, it said "Hunger At Record Low 5.1%." According to Dr. Mangahas: "The great increase in hunger from 2003 to 2005 cannot be dismissed by the Budget Secretary's claim that Filipinos exaggerate deprivation
. Assuming, for the sake of argument, a cultural tendency to overstate hunger, then such tendency should have been active in 2003 also, and could not explain the large change from 2003 to 2005."
SWS' generating and publicizing alternative statistics is an activity that helps to put its subject matter higher on the agenda of public and private policymakers. SWS' data on regular topics like hunger
, poverty
and governance
and on special topics such as corruption
, the legal profession
, domestic violence
, and disadvantaged
groups are consciously meant as "statistics for advocacy
," and not for mere academic study.
SWS issues its reports through the mass media
so as to reach a wide audience. But it does not do these reports for the mass media, except when a media organization commissions a survey. Dissemination of the Social Weather Reports is not solely dependent on media, but also uses other channels aimed directly at key groups of society, including academics.
The SWS pre-election polls had pointed to the narrow victory of President Fidel Ramos in 1992, the easy victory of President Joseph Estrada
in 1998, and the (separate) Vice-Presidential wins of Estrada in 1992 and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
in 1998.
In the senatorial elections where the 12 candidates with the most votes win, all SWS predictions which were statistically conclusive have also turned out correct, this despite the inherent difficulty to predict with a small sample.
SWS day-of-election national surveys or exit polls, which started nationally in 1995 and sponsored by the ABS-CBN
Broadcasting Corporation, have rendered a very valuable public service, by accurately anticipating, within 24 hours, outcomes that the election commission takes over two weeks to complete.
The Exit Poll of 1995 declared, correctly, only the first 7 candidates as senatorial winners. Of the 7 candidates it saw as tied for the last 5 seats, 4 (Tatad, Honasan, Fernan and Coseteng) eventually won. The 1995 senatorial election was extremely close, with a mere 0.2% of the vote separating the last winner’s 33.8% and the first loser’s 33.6%
(Abenir and Laylo 1996).
Exit Poll 1998 not only called the presidential and vice-presidential winners, which was widely expected, but also estimated the Estrada vote as 39.2%, which was validated by the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) eventual 39.9%, and Macapagal-Arroyo vote as 50.0%, versus Comelec’s 49.6%. It correctly predicted the first 11 senatorial candidates as winners, and called the 12th place a tie between two candidates, one of whom (Oreta) eventually won officially (Mangahas 1998).
Exit Poll 2001 obtained a significant two-point spread between the 13th and the 14th ranks, inducing SWS to call the first 13 as winners, which was proven correct by the official count completed three weeks after the election. (Mangahas, Guerrero and Sandoval 2001).
The conduct and publication or broadcast of election surveys are covered by the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of expression, based on landmark rulings of the Supreme Court in G.R. No. 133486, ABS-CBN v. Comelec, January 28, 2000, pertaining to exit polls, and G.R. No. 147571, SWS and Manila Standard v. Comelec, May 5, 2001, pertaining to pre-election surveys (Mangahas 1999, Panganiban 2000, 2001).
The exit poll’s ranking of candidates matches the official canvass. It understates the canvass by 2 points for FPJ and by 1 point each for Lacson, Roco, and Villanueva, all within the error margin. The counterpart of the understatements, however, is an overstatement by 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 points for GMA, resulting in an overstatement of her margin over FPJ by 7 points (Table 5). Thus whereas the exit poll, by the afternoon of May 11, suggested a substantial margin of 11 points, the official canvass eventually ended, on June 20, with a margin of only 3.5 points; this has been one dissatisfaction with the exit poll.
The exit poll’s identification of winners matched the official canvass in the case of the vice-president and 11 senators.
Apparent discrepancies of Exit Poll with Official results were readily explained both by sampling
and non-sampling error
s. The latter is largely a result of biases arising from the huge percentage of non-responses coming from targeted respondents who were not available from 3 to 6 pm, and the uneven proportion of refusals across household classes (which largely arose in NCR). The committee noted that these non-responses could not be ignored, hence, had appropriate weights been applied to account for these non-responses (whether in the form of re-weighting or some imputation), estimates from the Exit Poll would have been closer to the official results.
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
body in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. It is a private, independent
Independent business
In business, an independent business as a term of distinction generally refers to privately owned companies . Independent businesses most commonly take the form of sole-proprietorships...
, non-partisan, non-profit scientific institute in the Philippines which conducts social surveys
Statistical survey
Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....
and does survey-based social science research and other educational activities, using professional standards, for the main purpose of promoting the broad Quality of Life of the greater number of the Filipino people
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
in the context of a free democratic society.
SWS is recognized by the World Association for Public Opinion Research
World Association for Public Opinion Research
The World Association for Public Opinion Research is an international professional association of researchers in the fields of communication and survey research...
(WAPOR) for its fight for election survey freedom, and ultimate victory in the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the Philippines
The Supreme Court of the Philippines is the Philippines' highest judicial court, as well as the court of last resort. The court consists of 14 Associate Justices and 1 Chief Justice...
that benefited all survey researchers in the Philippines, not only SWS.
The institution
As an independentIndependent business
In business, an independent business as a term of distinction generally refers to privately owned companies . Independent businesses most commonly take the form of sole-proprietorships...
institution, the SWS formally registered with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC on August 8, 1985. Its mission is to regularly do scientific social surveys for the sake of education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
(so eyes may see social conditions), conscientization (so hearts may feel social problems); and analysis (so minds may understand their solutions).
Its vision is to set standards of excellence in the practice of "Statistics For Advocacy" within a democratic context: using a socially-oriented agenda, making practical technical innovations, communicating findings to the general public, and teaching the technology to other institutions. Its basic functions include: social analysis and research, with stress on social indicators and the development of new data sources; design and implementation of social, economic, and political surveys, including public opinion polls; and the dissemination of research findings through publications, seminars, briefings, and other channels.
SWS does its own fieldwork and data processing
Data processing
Computer data processing is any process that a computer program does to enter data and summarise, analyse or otherwise convert data into usable information. The process may be automated and run on a computer. It involves recording, analysing, sorting, summarising, calculating, disseminating and...
, making it a full-service survey research institute. It operates as a self-supporting, non-subsidized, academic institute for survey research on topics of public interest, deriving financial sustainability from subscriptions, commissioned surveys, social survey contracts, as well as from training and consultancy.
National Social Weather Surveys invite public subscriptions thus generating funds from survey users which are pooled together and used to for a continuing series of social surveys.
Giving priority and emphasis on credibility, SWS inhibits itself from conducting proprietary or confidential surveys. As such, no research sponsor can suppress the use of data generated by the surveys it has financed. In cases of surveys commissioned on highly sensitive topics, the sponsors may obtain a strictly temporary period of embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
of the data and of research findings.
Ultimately, all SWS surveys are accessible for research without prior permission from sponsors. SWS materials, including raw data, are also be made available to all interested parties, without discrimination, at reasonable charges reflecting the cost of production.
Philippines democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
through the conduct of surveys, particularly the opinion polls, pre-election polls
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
, exit polls, social weather surveys, quality of life indicators, and others.
The SWS surveys measure Filipinos' opinions on public issues, including political ones, as a democratic society. Its premise is that there are no morally right or wrong answers to the survey questions. The SWS motto Quot Homines Tot Sententiae,, meaning "As Many Opinions As There Are People," implies that SWS is open-minded to whatever the results of a survey may be.
Dr. Mangahas, president of SWS calls the SWS' activities as democratic discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
in the modern world which has particular need for scientific opinion polling during times of crisis
Crisis
A crisis is any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society...
, including the Marcos
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. was a Filipino leader and an authoritarian President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives and a member of the Philippine Senate...
' dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
, the military coup attempts like the Oakwood mutiny
Oakwood mutiny
The Oakwood mutiny occurred in the Philippines on July 27, 2003. A group of 321 armed soldiers who called themselves "Bagong Katipuneros" led by Army Capt. Gerardo Gambala and LtSG...
, Juetenggate, Hello Garci scandal
Hello Garci scandal
The Hello Garci scandal was a political scandal and electoral crisis in the Philippines.The scandal involved former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who allegedly rigged the 2004 national election in her favor. The official results of that election gave Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro...
. According to him: "If SWS polling became controversial, we accept it as part of the trade. We are not creating controversies, but simply letting the light of day shine on them, in keeping with the final verse of the SWS Hymn: 'Yan ang aming hangarin, Demokrasya'y pagtibayin. Instrumento ng masa Sa kanilang karaingan SWS ay tinatag Layon nitong magampanan, Na ang bayan ay magising, sa katotohanan."
SWS deliberately tracks poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
and hunger
Hunger
Hunger is the most commonly used term to describe the social condition of people who frequently experience the physical sensation of desiring food.-Malnutrition, famine, starvation:...
rather than purchasing power and nutrition, since it regards deprivation
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
as more urgent to measure than wealth
Wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...
and obesity
Obesity
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
. SWS scientists have regularly participated in the global association of researchers called International Society for Quality of Life Studies
International Society for Quality of Life Studies
The International Society for Quality of Life Studies is an international, academic organization which promotes research in and measurement of "Quality of life."-Objectives:...
(ISQOLS).
A reasonably complete survey on QOL includes governance
Governance
Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...
among its topics, since "bad governance definitely makes people feel bad." Quality of Life (QOL) is the generic term replacing the original, anti-economics term "social indicators" to encompass well-being in all aspects meaningful to people. QOL is always multidimensional. It is quite normal for chronically bad aspects of QOL to have priority in social science research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
, just as illness has normal priority over wellness in medical research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
.
SWS reports its core indicators
Economic indicator
An economic indicator is a statistic about the economy. Economic indicators allow analysis of economic performance and predictions of future performance. One application of economic indicators is the study of business cycles....
, whether favorable to the administration or not, every quarter. On January 6, 2006, the SWS release to the media was "Hunger Hits Record 16.7%"; on October 13, 2003, it said "Hunger At Record Low 5.1%." According to Dr. Mangahas: "The great increase in hunger from 2003 to 2005 cannot be dismissed by the Budget Secretary's claim that Filipinos exaggerate deprivation
Deprivation
Deprivation may refer to:* Poverty* Relative deprivation* Sleep deprivation* Maternal deprivation...
. Assuming, for the sake of argument, a cultural tendency to overstate hunger, then such tendency should have been active in 2003 also, and could not explain the large change from 2003 to 2005."
SWS' generating and publicizing alternative statistics is an activity that helps to put its subject matter higher on the agenda of public and private policymakers. SWS' data on regular topics like hunger
Hunger
Hunger is the most commonly used term to describe the social condition of people who frequently experience the physical sensation of desiring food.-Malnutrition, famine, starvation:...
, poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
and governance
Governance
Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...
and on special topics such as corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
, the legal profession
Profession
A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....
, domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
, and disadvantaged
Disadvantaged
The "disadvantaged" is a generic term for individuals or groups of people who:* Face special problems such as physical or mental disability * Lack money or economic support....
groups are consciously meant as "statistics for advocacy
Advocacy
Advocacy is a political process by an individual or a large group which normally aims to influence public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions; it may be motivated from moral, ethical or faith principles or simply to protect an...
," and not for mere academic study.
SWS issues its reports through the mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
so as to reach a wide audience. But it does not do these reports for the mass media, except when a media organization commissions a survey. Dissemination of the Social Weather Reports is not solely dependent on media, but also uses other channels aimed directly at key groups of society, including academics.
The SWS National pre-election and day-of-elections surveys
Among the various survey practitioners in the Philippines, mostly commercial firms, and mostly affiliated with the Marketing and Opinion Research Society of the Philippines (MORES), SWS was for many years the only one with a policy of publishing its findings on voter preferences prior to the elections (surveys of other groups are only made public by sponsor’s permission).The SWS pre-election polls had pointed to the narrow victory of President Fidel Ramos in 1992, the easy victory of President Joseph Estrada
Joseph Estrada
Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada was the 13th President of the Philippines, serving from 1998 until 2001. Estrada was the first person in the Post-EDSA era to be elected both to the presidency and vice-presidency.Estrada gained popularity as a film actor, playing the lead role in over 100 films in...
in 1998, and the (separate) Vice-Presidential wins of Estrada in 1992 and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a Filipino politician who served as the 14th President of the Philippines from 2001 to 2010, as the 12th Vice President of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, and is currently a member of the House of Representatives representing the 2nd District of Pampanga...
in 1998.
In the senatorial elections where the 12 candidates with the most votes win, all SWS predictions which were statistically conclusive have also turned out correct, this despite the inherent difficulty to predict with a small sample.
SWS day-of-election national surveys or exit polls, which started nationally in 1995 and sponsored by the ABS-CBN
ABS-CBN
ABS–CBN Corporation is a Philippine-based media conglomerate. It is the Philippines' largest media and entertainment conglomerate. The corporation was the merger of Alto Broadcasting System which at that time owned by James Lindenberg and Antonio Quirino, and the Chronicle Broadcasting Network ...
Broadcasting Corporation, have rendered a very valuable public service, by accurately anticipating, within 24 hours, outcomes that the election commission takes over two weeks to complete.
The Exit Poll of 1995 declared, correctly, only the first 7 candidates as senatorial winners. Of the 7 candidates it saw as tied for the last 5 seats, 4 (Tatad, Honasan, Fernan and Coseteng) eventually won. The 1995 senatorial election was extremely close, with a mere 0.2% of the vote separating the last winner’s 33.8% and the first loser’s 33.6%
(Abenir and Laylo 1996).
Exit Poll 1998 not only called the presidential and vice-presidential winners, which was widely expected, but also estimated the Estrada vote as 39.2%, which was validated by the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) eventual 39.9%, and Macapagal-Arroyo vote as 50.0%, versus Comelec’s 49.6%. It correctly predicted the first 11 senatorial candidates as winners, and called the 12th place a tie between two candidates, one of whom (Oreta) eventually won officially (Mangahas 1998).
Exit Poll 2001 obtained a significant two-point spread between the 13th and the 14th ranks, inducing SWS to call the first 13 as winners, which was proven correct by the official count completed three weeks after the election. (Mangahas, Guerrero and Sandoval 2001).
The conduct and publication or broadcast of election surveys are covered by the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of expression, based on landmark rulings of the Supreme Court in G.R. No. 133486, ABS-CBN v. Comelec, January 28, 2000, pertaining to exit polls, and G.R. No. 147571, SWS and Manila Standard v. Comelec, May 5, 2001, pertaining to pre-election surveys (Mangahas 1999, Panganiban 2000, 2001).
The 2004 election race
In 2004, leading up to the May 10 national election, SWS published five polls on electoral preferences, done on January 16–22, February 17–25, March 21–29, April 10–17, and May 1–4. The January and February surveys each had a sample size of 1,200 registered voter respondents, the March survey had 1,400 registered voter respondents, the April survey had 1,400 registered and likely voter respondents, and the May survey had 2,000 registered and likely voter respondents.The exit poll’s ranking of candidates matches the official canvass. It understates the canvass by 2 points for FPJ and by 1 point each for Lacson, Roco, and Villanueva, all within the error margin. The counterpart of the understatements, however, is an overstatement by 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 points for GMA, resulting in an overstatement of her margin over FPJ by 7 points (Table 5). Thus whereas the exit poll, by the afternoon of May 11, suggested a substantial margin of 11 points, the official canvass eventually ended, on June 20, with a margin of only 3.5 points; this has been one dissatisfaction with the exit poll.
The exit poll’s identification of winners matched the official canvass in the case of the vice-president and 11 senators.
Discrepancies
There were discrepancies noted in the Exit Poll results of 2004 vis-à-vis NAMFREL and Official counts. The committee, however, did not find any evidence suggesting that the Exit Poll results were deliberately skewed toward any candidate. The sample selection and interview instruments (ballots followed by questionnaires) of the Exit Poll were deemed methodologically sound. In addition, an audit of the field operations indicated that the design was faithfully executed, and that encoding errors for candidate choices were minimal and not deliberate.Apparent discrepancies of Exit Poll with Official results were readily explained both by sampling
Sampling error
-Random sampling:In statistics, sampling error or estimation error is the error caused by observing a sample instead of the whole population. The sampling error can be found by subtracting the value of a parameter from the value of a statistic...
and non-sampling error
Non-sampling error
In statistics, non-sampling error is a catch-all term for the deviations from the true value that are not a function of the sample chosen, including various systematic errors and any random errors that are not due to sampling. Non-sampling errors are much harder to quantify than sampling errors ....
s. The latter is largely a result of biases arising from the huge percentage of non-responses coming from targeted respondents who were not available from 3 to 6 pm, and the uneven proportion of refusals across household classes (which largely arose in NCR). The committee noted that these non-responses could not be ignored, hence, had appropriate weights been applied to account for these non-responses (whether in the form of re-weighting or some imputation), estimates from the Exit Poll would have been closer to the official results.
Membership
A membership organization, its members, called Fellows, make up the General Assembly that elects its Board of Directors every year. The Fellows are distinguished social scientists in the field of economics, political science, sociology, statistics, market research, and others. Aside from the seven founding fellows, there are regular fellows comprising the membership.Founding Fellows
- Dr. Mahar Mangahas (currently the President and CEO)
- Prof. Felipe B. Miranda
- Mercedes R. Abad
- Jose P. de Jesus
- Ma. Alcestis Abrea-Mangahas
- Gemino H. Abad
- Rosa Linda Tidalgo-Miranda
Social Weather Surveys
The Social Weather Surveys are used for public opinion polls. They provide an independent source of pertinent, accurate, timely and credible data on Philippines economic and social conditions. The surveys fill in gaps in data not covered by existing sources. They are meant to supplement, not duplicate, existing government statistical activities.Social Weather Indicators
- Statistic Database
- Change in quality of life
- Expected change in quality of life
- Expected change in the economy
- Satisfaction with the President