SurveyMonkey and NBC News in Polling Partnership

DIY online research firm SurveyMonkey has announced a partnership with broadcast and digital news provider NBC News. The deal has two aims: to deliver in-depth assessments of public opinion and attitudes; and more generally to explore best practice in online survey research.

SurveyMonkey VP of Survey Research Jon Cohen (pictured), formerly Head of Polling at The Washington Post and Vice President of Research at the Pew Research Centre, will team up with John Lapinski (PhD), Head of the Elections Unit at NBC News and Associate Professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, to lead the initiative.

These two will head a team of 'leading social scientists and survey practitioners', who will 'work carefully to advance key learnings on how to deliver quality public opinion data that leverages decades of proven polling best practices and today's technologies.'

Results from a first wave of research have been published, suggesting that fifty-eight percent of Americans support banning all flights to the United States from countries experiencing an Ebola outbreak.

Broadcast and digital news provider NBC News is part of NBCUniversal, itself owned by Comcast Corporation. SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999 and has over 450 employees globally, with headquarters in Palo Alto, CA and a web site at www.surveymonkey.com .