It’s not easy to be a pollster these days. As polls have proliferated, the job of legitimate survey researchers has become increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, those of us who are trying to conduct quality surveys are painted with the same brush as those who are not.

It’s little wonder that so few people are willing to respond to polls. It’s hard for people to know what is legitimate and what is just an attempt to sell them something. (There are many other factors contributing to low response rates, including poll fatigue and developments in technology that allow people to avoid answering the phone.)

“There are surveys, and there are ‘surveys,'” George N. Wells of Dover, N.J., wrote in the comments section of one of the articles we recently wrote about polls. “My phone has rung more than once where the survey questions are designed to get a particular answer. Later on I read or hear about that same survey being cited as endorsing the particular viewpoint of the organization that sponsored the poll.”