A fairly popular question but most candidates could not differentiate between opinion poll and public opinion. They were expected to define opinion poll as a scientific method of measuring the choice of people on a
given socio-political issue. This shortcoming accounted for the poor performance and low marks in part (b). The candidates were also expected to state the following factors in the (b) part:

(i) lack of expertise knowledge by officials conducting the pools;
(ii) inadequacy of reliable technology which may produce accurate results;
(iv) high level of illiteracy and ignorance among the people;
(iv) problems of analyzing statistical data;
(v) lack of objectivity among respondents;
(vi) people get scared of being interviewed;
(vii) poor communication network;
(viii) possibility of manipulating the figures generated or gathered during the exercise;
(ix) the selection of the sampling may be misleading;
(x) respondents may be highly influenced by cultural, religious or traditional sentiments.