online opt-in
Ipsos
Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Free Speech For All (News Issue Poll 4) · Apr 27–28, 2022 · US national
Methodology
- Pollster
- Ipsos commercial
- Sponsor
- Thomson Reuters
- Commissioned by
- Thomson Reuters
- Fielded
- Apr 27–28, 2022
- Population
- adults
- Sample size
- 1,003
- Sample frame
- online opt-in
- Panel
- Ipsos online panel plus partner panels and river sampling
- Mode
- online - self-administered web survey; sample randomly drawn from Ipsos's online panel, partner online panel sources, and 'river' sampling; does not rely on a population frame in the traditional sense
- Margin of error
- Credibility interval of +/- 3.8 percentage points for all respondents; design-effect adjusted confidence interval +/- 5.3 points. Ipsos states statistical margins of error are not applicable to online non-probability polls.
- Weighting
- Raking-ratio adjustment to U.S. population targets from the 2019 American Community Survey; post-hoc weights on gender, age, race/ethnicity, region, and education.
- Geography
- US national
- Base notes
- 437 Democrats, 358 Republicans, 138 Independents.
Sources
Verification note. Full 12-page Reuters/Ipsos topline & methodology PDF retrieved and text-extracted. Fielded days after DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act and the bill stripping Disney of its special district status; the Ipsos writeup explicitly frames the trans items around DeSantis. FRAME CAUTION: online opt-in / river sample; Ipsos reports a credibility interval, not a margin of error. Item codes TM2062Y21_1 through _3 carry a Y21 suffix, indicating the battery was first fielded in 2021 - an earlier fielding I was unable to locate (see known_gaps).
Figures below are transcribed from these documents. Where they disagree with the source, the source governs.
Questions asked (5)
'Don't Say Gay' style bans on classroom discussion for ages 5-9
Please indicate if you support or oppose the following
Please indicate if you support or oppose the following - Laws that ban classroom discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity for children ages 5-9
Wording notes: bundles sexual orientation and gender identity into one stimulus | the age band 5-9 is the most sympathetic possible framing for the restriction - it corresponds to the K-3 scope of the Florida law | 'Not sure' offered
neutral — The description is an accurate summary of what the Florida statute did, and the scale is balanced with a 'not sure' escape. The age specification (5-9) is doing real work on the result, but it is doing so because it is faithful to the law rather than because the pollster chose a flattering frame.
Subgroup figures (6)
omnibus recognition of transgender gender identity across restrooms, sports and birth certificates
Please indicate if you support or oppose the following
Please indicate if you support or oppose the following - Policies that recognize transgender people's gender identity, such as access to public restrooms, sports competitions, and birth certificates
Wording notes: triple-barreled - restrooms, sports competitions and birth certificates are three distinct policy domains with very different levels of public support | sports is the least popular of the three and is bundled in with the two more popular ones, which drags the composite down
double_barreled — Three separable policies are fused into a single support/oppose judgment. Because the same fielding shows sports-specific support far below the composite, a respondent who backs restroom access and accurate birth certificates but not sports inclusion cannot register that. The resulting 46%/40% split is uninterpretable as a measure of any one policy.
Subgroup figures (6)
banning doctors from providing transition-related treatment to minors
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - Doctors should be banned from providing transgender minors with treatments that help change their physical characteristics to better resemble their gender identity.
Wording notes: agree/disagree format, which is known to produce acquiescence bias toward 'agree' | restrictive polarity - agreeing means supporting a ban | 'treatments that help change their physical characteristics' describes the intervention by its bodily effect rather than by name, and does not distinguish reversible blockers from hormones or surgery
tilts_restrictive — Two compounding problems. Agree/disagree items reliably draw acquiescent 'agree' responses, and here 'agree' is the restrictive direction, so the format itself inflates the ban. Separately, describing the care as 'treatments that help change their physical characteristics' foregrounds irreversible bodily alteration and collapses the clinically distinct interventions into one. This is a materially more restrictive instrument than a neutral 'should minors be able to access X' construction.
Subgroup figures (6)
transgender girls in women's sports
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - Transgender girls should be allowed to participate in women's sports.
Wording notes: affirming polarity - agreeing means supporting inclusion, the reverse of the youth-medical item beside it | category mismatch: 'transgender girls' (minors) paired with 'women's sports' (adult category) | no level of competition specified
neutral — Straightforwardly worded and - importantly - paired with an exact mirror item about transgender boys, which is a genuine design strength: it lets an analyst see that opposition is specific to trans girls (48% disagree) rather than to trans athletes generally (41% disagree for boys). The acquiescence bias inherent to agree/disagree runs affirming here, the opposite direction from the item before it.
Subgroup figures (6)
transgender boys in men's sports
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - Transgender boys should be allowed to participate in men's sports.
Wording notes: deliberate mirror of the transgender-girls item - one of the very few instruments in this corpus that asks both directions
neutral — Identical construction to its mirror item, which is exactly what makes the pair valuable. The 13-point gap in disagreement between trans girls (48%) and trans boys (41%) - and the fact that a large minority still objects to trans boys in men's sports, where no competitive-fairness rationale applies - is evidence that the objection is not reducible to the fairness argument usually offered for it.
Subgroup figures (6)