"Handwashing was a major focus of public health education during the recent outbreak. The results of this survey show that these efforts helped people protect themselves," said Blendon.
This is the third in a series of polls about Americans' response to the H1N1 flu outbreak.
The first survey was released May 1, 2009.
The second survey was released May 8, 2009.
Methodology
This is the 31st in a series of studies on the public and biological security by the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP) at Harvard School of Public Health. The study was designed and analyzed by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The project director is Robert J. Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health. The research team also includes Gillian K. SteelFisher, John M. Benson, and Kathleen J. Weldon of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Melissa J. Herrmann of SSRS/ICR. Fieldwork was conducted via telephone (including both landline and cell phone) for HORP by SSRS/ICR of Media (PA) June 22-28, 2009.
The survey was conducted with a representative national sample of 1,823 adults age 18 and over, including oversamples of parents, non-Hispanic African Americans and Hispanics, and specifically parents who are non-Hispanic African Americans and Hispanics. Altogether 315 non-Hispanic African Americans and 260 Hispanics were interviewed. The number of parents in total is 744, which includes 115 non-Hispanic African American parents and 131 Hispanic parents. In the overall results, these groups were weighted to their actual proportion of the total adult population.
The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. Possible sources of non-sampling error include non-response bias, as well as question wording and ordering effects. Non-response in telephone surveys produces some known biases in survey-derived estimates because participation tends to vary for different subgroups of the population. To compensate for these known biases, sample data are weighted to the most recent Census data available from the Current Population Survey for gender, age, race, education, region, and number of adults in the household. Other techniques, including random-digit dialing, replicate subsamples, and systematic respondent selection within households, are used to ensure that the sample is representative.
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