A critical element to a “successful” public opinion research project is monitoring actual costs versus the planned budget. Students will learn how to how budget monitoring will identify common ways public opinion projects “get off budget” and discuss how to manage correcting these issues over the life of the project. Monitoring budget variances will help identify the difference between budgeted costs, amount of work completed, actual costs incurred, and realistic corrective strategies. We’ll explore different types of variances and the reasons you could encounter them, such as labor overages, response rate shortages, etc.