Polling Review Board (PRB)

The Polling Review Board (PRB) is part of the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP), an association comprised of survey organizations from academia, the media, market research, and the news, among other industries. The Polling Review Board supports the NCPP's mission by monitoring the conduct and reporting of polls by member and nonmember organizations. Established in 1969, the NCPP has undertaken to set professional standards on polling and to educate the media, politicians, and the general public on polling, reporting poll results, and the interpretation of reported polls. The NCPP publishes principles of survey disclosures and maintains a Speaker's Bureau and an interactive Web site.

The Polling Review Board publishes reports, available on the NCPP's Web site, that distinguish different types of polls and clarify issues of interest to those in and outside of the polling organizations that make up the NCPP's membership. The paragraph that follows details the NCPP's Principles of Disclosure, the guide used by the NCPP and the Polling Review Board to ensure that consumers of surveys are able to understand reported survey results.

The NCPP's Principles of Disclosure are aimed at ensuring that publicly available survey results disclose methodological information which will enable consumers of surveys to assess the reliability and [Page 589]validity of the results reported. The Principles of Disclosure are organized according to three levels of reporting. Level One stipulates the information that all reports of survey findings from member organizations must contain if issued for public release. Level Two disclosure includes information which is provided by a member organization in response to a written request for additional information pertaining to reported survey results publicly released by a member organization. Member organizations are encouraged to provide Level Three disclosures, which include the release of raw datasets, the posting of complete survey wordings, question ordering and percentage results for publicly released survey questions, and a note regarding the survey organization's compliance with NCPP Principles of Disclosure.

Beyond these disclosure levels, the NCPP also details in its Principles of Disclosure a review procedure employed by the NCPP officers and the Committee on Disclosure in which a question is raised regarding member compliance with NCPP Principles of Disclosure and/or where an individual or organization questions the survey methods employed by a member organization's publicly available survey. The Principles of Disclosure were last revised in 2006.