The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey on community resilience in the wake of Superstorm Sandy was conducted from April 19 to June 2 by NORC at the University of Chicago, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. It is based on landline and cellular telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 2,025 adults, including 1,007 adults who lived in 16 counties in New York and New Jersey affected by Superstorm Sandy and 1,018 adults from the rest of the United States. Interviews included 1,073 respondents on landline telephones and 952 on cellphones.
Digits in the phone numbers dialed were generated randomly to reach households with unlisted and listed landline and cellphone numbers.
Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish, depending on respondent preference.
The affected region included the 16 counties in New York and New Jersey that received a FEMA impact rating of "very high" based on a composite indicator of wind, storm surge and precipitation. Respondents were deemed eligible if they lived in the targeted counties on Oct. 29, 2012, the day Superstorm Sandy's center made landfall in New Jersey.
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, education and race. In addition, the weighting took into account patterns of phone use - landline only, cellphone only and both - by region.
No more than one time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 4.0 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled. The margin of sampling error for the affected region sample was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points and plus or minus 4.2 percentage points for the rest of the country.
There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.
The questions, results and more detail about the survey's methodology are available at
The Associated Press