Critiquing a poll Th e Wall Street Journal published an article on attitudes toward the Social Security system based on a sample survey. It found, for example, that 36% of people aged 18 to 34 expected Social Security to pay nothing at all when they retire. News articles tend to be brief in describing sample surveys. Here is part of the Wall Street Journal’s description of this poll:

Th e Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll was based on nationwide telephone interviews of 2,012 adults, conducted Th ursday through Sunday by the polling organizations of Peter Hart and Robert Teeter.

Th e sample was drawn from 520 randomly selected geographic points in the continental U.S. Each region was represented in proportion to its population.

Households were selected by a method that gave all telephone numbers, listed and unlisted, an equal chance of being included.22 Page 249 lists several “questions to ask” about an opinion poll. What answers does the Wall Street Journal give to each of these questions?