The 2001-02 Ohio's Education Matters public opinion poll was designed by Paul Werth Associates' Research Services Group and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation. Strategic Research Group (SRG), based in Columbus, Ohio, was responsible for sample selection and survey implementation.

Because one issue of interest in the current poll was public awareness of, and reaction to, the Ohio Supreme Court case DeRolph vs. the State of Ohio, a repeated-measures design was used to measure attitudes and awareness before and after key events in the case. The first panel was conducted in September 2001. Strategic Research Group (SRG) randomly selected and interviewed adult residents of Ohio regarding educational issues in the state. Respondents were asked at the end of this survey if they would consent to be called back within the next few weeks and asked some additional questions. Of the 505 respondents who completed surveys during the initial panel, 442 respondents answered "yes" to participating in the follow-up panel.

To conduct the follow-up survey, SRG began calling all 442 consenting respondents on November 27, 2001. Up to six attempts were made to reach all consenting respondents from the initial panel. A total of 323 surveys were completed during the follow-up panel.

Quality Assurance
Data were collected by SRG's professional telephone interviewing staff. Interviewers received extensive training in interviewing skills as well as additional project-specific training, including a read-through of the survey on paper and a review of rotation patterns, response categories, and response codes. Beginning November 26, 2001, all interviewers were trained on the second panel questionnaire, addressing any important changes and special procedures.

As part of SRG's standard quality assurance procedures, approximately 35% of all surveys were monitored and approximately 15% of all surveys were verified. All survey responses were checked for completeness by both the Survey Director and Survey Supervisors, and any missing or incomplete information was re-recorded following the completion of the survey.