Methodology
How does YouGov conduct public opinion research
YouGov conducts its public opinion surveys online using something called "active sampling" for the overwhelming majority of its commercial work, including all nationally and regionally representative research. The emphasis is always on the quality of the sample, rather than the quantity of respondents.
When using active sampling, restrictions are put in place to ensure that only the people contacted are allowed to participate. This means that all the respondents who complete YouGov surveys will have been selected by YouGov, from our panel of registered users, and only those who are selected from this panel are allowed to take part in the survey.
Who takes part in public opinion research?
YouGov has carefully recruited a panel of millions of people to take part in our surveys. Panel members are recruited from a host of different sources, including via standard advertising, and strategic partnerships with a broad range of websites.
When a new panel member is recruited, a host of socio-demographic information is recorded. For nationally representative samples, YouGov draws a sub-sample of the panel that is representative of British adults in terms of age, gender, social class and education, and invites this sub-sample to complete a survey.
To reiterate, with active sampling only this sub-sample has access to the questionnaire via their username and password, and respondents can only ever answer each survey once.
How is the data analysed?
Once the survey is complete, the final data is then statistically weighted to the national profile of all adults aged 18+ (including people without internet access). All reputable research agencies weight data as a fine-tuning measure and at YouGov we weight by age, gender, social class, region and level of education. For political work we also weight by how respondents voted at the previous election, how respondents voted at the EU referendum and their level of political interest. Targets for the weighted data is derived from four sources:
- The census
- Large scale random probability surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey, The National Readership survey and the British Election Study
- The results of the 2019 general election and 2016 referendum
- Official ONS population estimates
Active sampling ensures that the right people are invited in the right proportions. In combination with our statistical weighting, this ensures that our results are representative of the country as a whole. Not just those with internet access, but everyone. While it is true that not everyone does have access to the internet, independent academic research shows that its widespread uptake means the views of those with access to the internet and now mostly indistinguishable from those without.
Obtaining good-quality samples is a challenge for all methodologies. Response rates for telephone polls for example, have been declining in recent years - to typically below 10% - and often much lower in inner city areas. The ability to extrapolate from the under 10% of telephone respondents that pollsters can get hold of, to the 90% that they cannot, is clearly a challenge - leading to concerns over the quality of achieved samples, whether telephone or face-to-face. There are, of course, some areas where an online approach is inappropriate, and we would always alert our clients to this. However, it would be unfair to say that online is ‘biased’ in a way that offline is not. The fact is, there are different biases for which all approaches have to account.
For Scottish polls we additionally weight by country of birth and vote at the 2014 referendum on Independence. For polls of Greater London we additionally weight by ethnicity.
How does the YouGov Daily Agenda work?
Each day YouGov asks topical questions to get the public’s first judgement on the biggest issues of the day. These launch each weekday morning, and the results are released each afternoon.
It’s possible to respond to these questions in multiple places, including the YouGov website and app. Once you have responded you can also view the live, unweighted results collected so far.
However, these numbers are just an early indication, and it’s important to be cautious with them. Unlike a traditional poll they are not yet weighted to be representative of the full population – an adjustment that we do to ensure that the results are an accurate depiction of the views of all Britons.
It also means that, because anybody can take part in the poll through the YouGov website even if they are not regular panellists, people with a particular interest in a topic may be more likely to take part, skewing the results.
The final results will be published into the survey results archive each day, send out via the YouGov Daily email newsletter, and also tweeted from the YouGov's Twitter account. Unlike the live results, these results are weighted to be representative of the Great British population by:
Age
Gender
Education Level
Region
Social grade
2019 election vote
EU referendum vote
Political attention
For the final nationally representative results, we only include responses from people who answered the questions as part of a traditional YouGov survey, and not those who are just responding through the mobile app or the YouGov website. Our testing has shown that this methodology produces the most accurate results that are in line with standard YouGov polling.
How does YouGov ask about voting intention?
When we ask voting intention for Westminster elections we prompt people with the names of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru or "some other party". People selecting some other party are then shown a second screen offering the choice of other smaller political parties or "other".
The selection of which parties we prompt for is based purely upon what past research and comparison with election results has produced the most accurate results; there is no formal criteria or level of support at which a party is prompted for. This is kept under regular review to reflect changes in the party system.
Respondents are asked to say how likely they are to vote on a scale of zero to ten and their answers to voting intention questions are additionally weighted based on their answer and whether they report having voted at previous elections.
In designing our methodology, for Westminster and regional elections, our priority is always what our experience and research leads us to believe will produce the most accurate results.
How accurate are your results?
YouGov has a strong history of accurately predicting actual outcomes across a wide range of different subjects, including national and regional elections, political party leadership contests and even the results of ITV talent show Pop Idol - one of our earliest big successes!
Notes
YouGov is also a founder member of the British Polling Council and we abide by its rules.
YouGov is also a corporate member of ESOMAR - you can view full details of the YouGov answers to the ESOMAR 28 questions. YouGov is a member of the MRS.