Alice Tao

According to an Article written on NBCnews.com, a survey was conducted by NBC news asking
questions on peoples opinions of Ebola. The samples population of interest was all United States
citizens 18 years and older. The sampling frame was 2,517 people, who were randomly selected out of
people who had previously completed surveys on the SurveyMonkey website and were 18 years old or
older. The survey was sent over e-mail by SurveyMonkey.
The survey itself was only open to answering for one day, October 7th. Only 1,045 of the 2,517
people chosen started the survey, and only 96% of people who started the survey actually completed it.
This is a significant amount of nonresponse bias. At 1,010, only 40% of people chosen to take the survey
actually completed it. Since there were so many people that did not respond, there is a large amount of
the sample and population that is underrepresented. Another source of bias that could have affected the
amount of response or the actual answers themselves was the short amount of time that the survey was
open. Since the poll was only conducted in one day, there was a very limited time period that people
would be able to respond to and complete the survey.
Many of the questions were worded in an unbiased way. For example, one of the questions was,
How worried are you that there will be an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States? The
wording of the question does not lead the survey-takers towards any certain answer. Each question also
had multiple answers that allowed for all different opinions of the question. For example, one of the
questions asked whether or not people knew how the Ebola virus was passed from person to person. They
were asked to select all that apply; in this way, people were able to put more than one answer, or even
answer that they did not know. Most of the questions were worded so that people would not be lead to an
answer and would be unbiased. Also, the survey did not ask questions that would lead people to be biased
toward something they believe is socially acceptable. The survey topic wasnt anything socially
controversial, such as drugs/alcohol, but was instead focused on opinions about what the government
should do about Ebola.

Those sampled and the analysis of the data were stratified so that the sample was chosen in age
and sex proportions to mirror the statistics of the U.S. Census. In this regard, there was no undercoverage,
because most parts of the population were represented in sampling. However, there still could have been
undercoverage because there was so much nonresponse bias. If certain people did not complete the
survey, they took away representation from a certain part of the population. The sample selection process
itself was not biased, but the sample ended up being unrepresentative because of the nonresponse.
All of the analysis of the survey data is completed in percents. 72% of Americans surveyed said
they had an accurate understanding of how Ebola is spread, which is through bodily fluids. Most people,
76%, trusted the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent an outbreak of Ebola in the United
States. This is a much higher amount than the 56% who would trust their local office of emergency
management. Similarly, there was 64% of those surveyed who would trust the National Institutes of
Health (NIH). However, in order to analyze this data properly, one must also look at the 15% who did not
know whether or not they trusted the NIH. Some people may not have heard of the NIH, and would
therefore be unsure of whether or not they would trust the organization. According to the analysis in the
article, by an almost 2-1 margin, those surveyed disapproved of sending U.S. troops overseas to help
contain the outbreak. However, the data shows that another 24% also did not know enough to say whether
they approved of this or not.
The major, overall conclusion of the survey was that a majority of Americans want incoming
flights to be banned from countries with Ebola, such as Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. I disagree with
this conclusion. The majority that they talk about is 58% of the people who were surveyed. Since there
was such a large amount of nonresponse bias, the people that were surveyed did not represent the total
population well, and this may not really be the majority of all Americans. The results that came from the
data of this survey cannot be simply generalized to represent all American citizens. Another survey may
have to be conducted, or the other 1,507 people who did not complete the survey should be asked to
complete the survey and have their data added to the results.