Rachel's Thoughts on Polling

by Rachel

So I’m sitting here in Dan’s office going through the numbers on what should [hopefully] be our second to last day of polling. Having worked for the BSU Phone-a-thon I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task, but I was shocked that we burned through 1800 phone numbers in less than 6 days and weren’t even half way to our goal of 600 completed surveys! I’m beginning to wonder how accurate other polls are that I read about, now that I know how hard it is just to get one completed, especially by a male! I also wonder how different this experience would have been ten years ago, when hardly anyone had a cell phone or caller ID.

Although I haven’t been on the phone too much, it’s been really interesting hearing what people have to say. Almost everyone I’ve talked to has said that the number of uninsured Americans and the cost of insurance are the top two problems with America’s health care system. Also, most people have correctly answered the question about how many Americans are uninsured, though that is the middle number of the three choices, so people maybe just feel like that’s a safe bet. I hope that people will be as animated and passionate when it comes to the assembly.

Speaking of interesting, oh man, the people of Delaware county can be very entertaining! I got one answering machine where it took me a second or two to determine whether it was a machine or not, and this woman was basically saying if she didn’t call you back by Monday it was because she was on her deathbed in the hospital. I also got an answering machine where the whole family sang their last name in 4-part harmony. Creative, huh? It’s also fun to call Ball State professor’s who are always like, “Uh, do you realize you’re calling a Ball State office?” Luckily they are always really nice about completing the survey!

Tomorrow should be interesting because our polling consultants Josh and Don have decided we need to get our number of male respondents up. In order to accomplish this, tomorrow we will be asking for men only and, to be honest, this worries me. We all know for a fact our number of completed surveys will be lower, but I’m most worried about what it is going to do to everyone’s morale. We’ve discovered men are much more likely to hang up. They’re also fond of handing the phone over to their wife. Geeze men! What’s the deal?? Is it really that big of a hassle to talk on the phone for ten minutes? You don’t even have to come up with a conversation for goodness sakes!

Well, I need to get back to tallying numbers. Hopefully it’ll be good news!! Oh, and the next time someone calls asking you to complete a survey? Unless you’re walking out the door, just do it!!!