Methodology

Sponsoring organizations and questionnaire design: Elon University Poll and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics

Fieldwork: YouGov

Interview dates: July 7-11, 2025

Release date: August 6, 2025

Target population: U.S. adults, age 18 and older

Sample size: 1,500

Margin of error: +/-2.87 % (adjusted for weights)

Survey mode: Online, web-based survey, self-administered with online panels

Panelists: This poll utilizes a non-probability sample. All YouGov panelists have been active panelists for 30 days or longer.

Accessibility: Text-only screen reader version of all charts in this report

YouGov interviewed 1,671 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 1,500 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative “modeled frame” of U.S. adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region, and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 and 2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories), and education (4-categories), to produce the final weight.

Data Quality checks: We used three attention checks, one open end, one grid item and one multiple select. We used all three in combination when cleaning the data removing anyone who failed two or more attention checks. We also removed the top 2% of speeders and skippers from the data.

Comparison groups as percentage of total respondents: Those very/moderately interested in college sports – 29%, college football fans – 44%, college basketball fans (men’s or women’s) – 35%, fans of other college sports – 27%,  former college athletes and their families – 14%, Ages 18-44 – 47%, Ages 45+ – 53%, men – 46%, women – 54%.

Critical Mass for Crosstabs: All crosstabs must have at least 60 unweighted respondents per column in order to report their results. Every crosstab result reported in the release appears in the crosstabs.

Transparency: The Elon University Poll is a charter member of the Transparency Initiative, a program created by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in 2014 to educate polling firms on ways to better share how they collect and interpret their information. The Elon Poll’s voluntary participation in this initiative signifies a willingness to clearly state in its reports how questions were asked, in what order, who funded the poll and then conducted it, and a definition of the population under study, among other details.