Information for Panelists

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE PANEL?

The Utah Political Trends Panel is a means for measuring and studying public opinion about politics and public policy in Utah. It provides a way to find out what Utah voters think between elections when there is often limited information about what voters want.

HOW AND WHY WAS I SELECTED FOR THE PANEL?

You were randomly selected to participate in the Utah Political Trends Panel from the publicly-available Utah Voter File.

WHAT WILL MY EMAIL ADDRESS BE USED FOR?

Your email address will never be shared with any other organization or group. You will not receive any “spam” or unsolicited emails from either the Utah Political Trends Panel or any other group. We will send an occasional email inviting you to participate in the latest Utah Political Trends Panel as well as a brief reminder to those who have not yet participated.

HOW CAN I REMOVE MY NAME FROM THE MAILING LIST?

If you don’t wish to participate in a one particular poll, but are willing to participate in future polls, you don’t need to do anything. We will continue to request your participation in future surveys even if you can’t help us this time.

If you want to discontinue your participation in our panel and be removed from our list permanently you are free to do so at any time. Simply contact us and request that you be removed from our list. We will then remove your name and not contact you again. The quickest method to do this is sending an email from the email account to which we sent our invitation to help@utpoliticaltrends.com. If you prefer to contact us by phone or regular mail, our contact information is listed here.

CAN I SEE THE RESULTS OF THE SURVEY?

Yes. Once the survey is completed and the data collected, we will publish everything on our Results page. You may also visit our blog to read in-depth reporting and analyses on the survey results.

WHO SPONSORS THE UTAH political trends panel?

The Utah Political Trends Panel is sponsored by Y2 Analytics.

HOW OFTEN WILL I BE ASKED TO COMPLETE SURVEYS?

We field the survey monthly. You may not be asked to participate every month. You may want, however, to come back to this website to see the results, especially during election season or when there are topics of interest to you being debated in the public. There may also be other surveys when other important political events occur, though most of the surveys will be done monthly.

WHO WILL SEE THE ANSWERS TO THIS SURVEY?

Your answers are completely confidential; only internal researchers with a legitimate need to know will ever see the full data and results from the survey. Your survey responses will be used only for aggregated statistical tabulations, such as “60% of Utah voters approve of the job the governor is doing” or “10% more women than men voted for Democratic candidates in the last election.” Your individual answers will never be shared with anyone in a manner that reveals your identity or your contact information.

WILL MY NAME BE ASSOCIATED WITH MY ANSWERS?

You name and/or email address will never be associated with your answers. No one will be able to connect your answers with your name or email address.

CAN I SIGN FRIENDS UP FOR THE UTAH POLITICAL TRENDS PANEL?

No, because this survey is a probability sample of Utah voters that depends on random selection for its scientific validity. If we allowed anybody who wanted to participate to volunteer, we would go against the principle of random selection. Random selection is important because that is what makes it possible for us to compare our sample to the population of voters in the state of Utah. While we certainly appreciate the enthusiasm of those who might like to join the panel, we need to take steps to ensure that those who are selected represent as closely as possible the larger population.

WHAT IS MY COMMITMENT TO THE UTAH POLITICAL TRENDS PANEL?

We only ask that you volunteer a few minutes of your time to respond to our questions. Your answers are extremely valuable to the studying and understanding of voting behavior, public policy, and public opinion in Utah.

IS THERE ANY MONETARY COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATING IN THE POLL?

Sadly, because this is a survey with limited resources, we cannot offer any monetary compensation for your participation. Nevertheless, your answers are extremely valuable to our research and will be shared with policy makers so that Utah government can be more responsive to the public.

DO I HAVE TO COMPLETE A SURVEY IMMEDIATELY AFTER RECEIVING AN INVITATION EMAIL?

No. We appreciate your swift response to our invitations, but unlike a typical telephone survey a big advantage of Internet surveys is that you are free to complete the survey when it is most convenient for you. The surveys are generally active for several days after you receive the first email inviting you to participate. Generally, we will send a reminder email to those who haven’t responded before we deactivate the survey.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO COMPLETE UTAH POLITICAL TRENDS PANEL SURVEYS?

Our surveys will usually be between 20 to 30 questions long. Most participants take from 5 to 10 minutes to complete surveys of this length. If we ever do surveys longer than this, we will forewarn you in the email invitation.

If you have questions about the Utah Political Trends Panel that are not answered here, please email them to help@utpoliticaltrends.com.

Privacy policy

PRIVACY STATEMENT

The Utah Political Trends Panel is sponsored by Y2 Analytics. The Utah Political Trends Panel is firmly committed to protecting confidential information from abuse or exploitation. To protect your privacy and our integrity, the Utah Political Trends Panel will never sell, rent, or otherwise provide your contact information or personal information to any outside individual or group. We will never try to sell you anything or make sales solicitations. Only aggregate data will be shared with groups or individuals who are not directly associated with the Utah Political Trends Panel. From the aggregate data there will be no way to identify you or your answers.

INFORMATION YOU PROVIDE

We ask you to provide certain information about yourself to better measure the representation of our survey. To make correct conclusions about Utah politics, we need to know who is responding to our survey and what their lives are like. Therefore, we collect basic demographic information (e.g. income, education, sex, age, political party identification, marital status) to identify the characteristics of our respondents. We need to identify the characteristics of our survey respondents to generalize the answers of only a small portion of all voters in Utah to the entire group as accurately and correctly as possible. The demographic information you provide is never shared with anyone except academic researchers and is never linked to your email address or name. Even for non-personal questions, your answers are completely confidential and never linked to you individually.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT PASSIVELY

Our survey response software automatically collects such data as the time it takes to complete the survey, the date and time of access, whether the survey was completed or terminated early, and other such information. None of the information automatically collected compromises your privacy or confidentiality. All data collection is done on our servers and through the survey software; no files are downloaded to or stored on your computer. We do not use cookies to collect any information.

WHAT WE DO WITH YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

The information we collect from the publicly-available Utah Voter File is used only to contact you for future surveys and to identify basic demographic characteristics of our volunteer respondents. Your email address will never be shared with or distributed to any third-party group. All email addresses that we have are kept completely confidential and are used only for sending invitations to participate in Utah Political Trends Panel surveys.

We use the information you provide us primarily to contact you about surveys in which we would like you to participate, or to provide you with the results of the surveys. Any additional information you provide when participating in any of our surveys is subject to this privacy policy. We never send "spam" or unsolicited emails.

We use aggregated data from your survey responses to analyze and examine public policy and voting in Utah. This information is sometimes shared with others in aggregate form without any means of identifying your answers with your name or email address.

COMPLAINTS

If you have a complaint about the policies or procedures of the Utah Political Trends Panel, please contact us by sending an email to help@utpoliticaltrends.com. Alternatives to email contact are listed here.