How the AP-NORC poll on race relations was conducted

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll on progress for African-Americans was conducted by NORC from Feb. 15-19. It is based on online and telephone interviews of 1,337 adults who are members of NORC's nationally representative AmeriSpeak panel.

The poll includes a total of 388 black respondents, who were sampled at a higher rate than their proportion of the population for purposes of analysis. For results reported among all adults, responses among blacks are weighted to reflect their proportion among all U.S. adults.

The original sample was drawn from respondents selected randomly from NORC's National Frame based on address-based sampling and recruited by mail, email, telephone and face-to-face interviews.

NORC interviews participants over the phone if they don't have internet access. With a probability basis and coverage of people who can't access the internet, surveys using AmeriSpeak are nationally representative.

Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population's makeup by factors such as age, sex, race, education, region and phone use.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 3.9 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled. The margin of sampling error among blacks is plus or minus 7.3 percentage points.

There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.

The questions and results are available at http://www.apnorc.org/