How the AP-NORC Center poll of employers on the health insurance market was conducted

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll of employers on the health insurance market was conducted Aug. 19 to Oct. 8, 2014, among a random sample of 1,061 employers with at least three full-time or part-time employees. The survey was conducted with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Interviews with the nationally-representative sample of employers were conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. A total of 445 interviews were completed over the telephone and 616 online. Respondents were offered a $50 monetary incentive for participating.

A "most knowledgeable respondent" method was used to select the respondent in the organization who could best answer the survey. Thirty-one percent of respondents identified themselves as business owners, 30 percent as office managers, 18 percent as executive officers, 11 percent as human resources managers, 2 percent as benefits managers, 2 percent as project managers, and 6 percent as another position.

NORC selected the sample from the Dunn and Bradstreet business data supplied by Survey Sampling International. The sample was stratified by business size, and included an oversample of large businesses to ensure sufficient sample size for analysis.

The sample was weighted to adjust for unequal sampling probabilities, unknown eligibility or nonparticipation, and business region and size.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 5.6 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all employers in the U.S. were polled. 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