ORANGE COUNTY ANNUAL SURVEY

METHODS

The Orange County Annual Survey was conducted by Mark Baldassare, an associate professor of social 
ecology at UC Irvine. The telephone interviews with 1,008 adult residents took place between September 2 
and 19. Telephone interviews provide representative data in Orange County, because more than 97 percent 
of the households have telephones.

The calls were made on weekend days and weekday nights using a random sample of listed and unlisted 
telephone numbers. Telephone numbers were randomly generated by computer from a list of working blocks of 
telephone exchanges. Within a household, respondents were chosen for interview using the Troldahl-Carter 
method, which randomly selects a househoId member from a grid. The field work was conducted by the Center 
for Survey Research, Public Policy Research Organization, at UC Irvine. The sample was generated by 
Pijacki Associates of Shoreham, New York.

Each interview contained 90 questions and took an average of 20 minutes to complete. The surveys were 
designed in three stages over several months. In the first stage, a
mail questionnaire and personal interviews with community leaders were used to define topics and 
questions. The second stage involved meetings with the Research Advisory Committee. In this stage, Mark 
Baldassare drafted questions and made revisions based upon comments from the group. The final stage 
involved extensive consultation between Baldassare and the Center for Survey Research staff, followed by 
pre-tests and final revisions of the questions.

The interview began with questions about housing, economics, growth and general evaluations of orange 
County. These were followed by questions on transportation issues. Later in the interview, we turned to 
the topics of media use, civic and social responsibility and civil liberties. The conclusion of the 
survey was devoted to questions about respondents' household, financial, personal and political 
characteristics.

The survey also included questions devoted to the concerns of two private sponsors. These are not part of 
the Orange County Annual Survey report.

The survey's validity was checked by comparing the sample's characteristics to available information on 
Orange County's population. We compared the 1986 survey results to the 1980 Census, previous Orange 
County Annual Surveys, and other recent polling data. Age, marital status, and other demographic features 
of our sample were close to those noted in other studies. For data analyses, we statistically weighted 
the sample to represent the actual regional distribution of Orange County residents.

The sampling error for this survey is +/- 3 percent. This means it is 95 percent certain that the results 
are within 3 percentage points of what they would be if all adults in Orange County were interviewed. The 
sampling error for any subgroup would be larger. Sampling error is just one type of error to which 
surveys are subject. Results may be influenced by many other factors, such as question wording, survey 
timing and interview design.