Weiye Loh's Library tagged Survey → View Popular, Search in Google

Jul

2011

Gregory Rodriguez: The virtue of 'I don't know' - latimes.com

Do we really need a beauty queen to tell us how to solve our local school curriculum controversies? Maybe so, but only if she's actually thought it through and can articulate her argument. Just once, instead of dishing up happy talk regarding nuclear disarmament, I'd like to see Miss Wherever stand tall on her stilettos and say, "You know what, I've honestly never given it a thought and have no clue."

www.latimes.com/...susa-20110627,0,7215966.column

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Data Survey Unknown Neutrality Opinion

In a world where uninformed opinion is ubiquitous, wouldn't that be a sign of excellent Miss USA-worthy character?
We seem to be obsessed with opinions because we take them to be a marker of individual independence, distinctiveness and reasoned intelligence. Expressing opinions is how we also express our freedom of conscience and flex our political rights. But when we're obliged to have an opinion on everything, all the time, our expressions of conscience are less about independent thinking than about making stuff up.
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- A 1981 study out of the University of Michigan found that roughly 30% of survey respondents were willing to offer an opinion on a highly obscure piece of legislation if a "no opinion" option wasn't available. The researchers concluded that people "who really have no views on the issues under inquiry " often "simply flip mental coins in order to satisfy the interviewer's expectation."
- A similar 1983 study by University of Cincinnati political scientist George Bishop also revealed that roughly 30% of people who are polled will give their considered opinion on an entirely fictitious piece of legislation if not explicitly offered a "response alternative" that "allows them to admit they 'don't know' anything about it.'"
- Bishop concluded that "there is little to no relationship between an individual's willingness to admit ignorance and his or her tendency to offer opinions."
- Studies like these have led pollsters to realize that "no answer" isn't a missing data point (or a sign of a respondent's moral failure); having no opinion is a perfectly valid position. In fact, a "don't know" option can increase the accuracy of survey findings.
- Almost 2,500 years ago, Socrates was way out ahead on the "no opinion" option. On trial for the equivalent of heresy in Athens, he sparred with a pompous politician over the meaning of wisdom. He won: "I appear to be wiser than he," Socrates wrote, "because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
- Beauty queens — and everyone else — should take a lesson. Especially in America. We have as much of a right to our ignorance and indifference as we do to speak our minds. We're free to say "I don't know."

Jul

2010

On the Media: Survey shows that not all polls are equal - latimes.com

On the Media: Survey shows not all polls equal

www.latimes.com/...edia-20100703,0,7715000.column

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Survey media bias

Internet surveys sometimes acknowledge how unscientific (read: meaningless) they really are. They surely must be a pale imitation of the rigorous, carefully sampled, thoroughly transparent polls favored by political savants and mainstream news organizations
The line between junk and credible polling remains. But it became a little blurrier — creating concern among professional survey organizations and reason for greater skepticism by all of us — because of charges this week that one widely cited pollster may have fabricated data or manipulated it so seriously as to render it meaningless.
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- founder of the left-leaning Daily Kos website, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Oakland on Wednesday charging that Research 2000, the organization he had commissioned for 1 1/2 years to test voter opinion, had doctored its results.
- The firm's protestations that it did nothing wrong have been loud and repeated. Evidence against the company is somewhat arcane. Suffice it to say that independent statisticians have found a bewildering lack of statistical "noise" in the company's data. Where random variation would be expected, results are too consistent.
- Most reputable pollsters agree on one thing — polling organizations should publicly disclose as much of their methodology as possible. Just for starters, they should reveal how many people were interviewed, how they were selected, how many rejected the survey, how "likely voters" and other sub-groups were defined and how the raw data was weighted to reflect the population, or subgroups.
- Michael Cornfield, a George Washington University political scientist and polling expert, recommends that concerned citizens ignore the lone, sometimes sensational, poll result. "Trend data are superior to a single point in time," Cornfield said via e-mail, "and consensus results from multiple firms are superior to those conducted by a single outfit."
- The rest of us should look at none of the polls. Or look at all of them. And look out for the operators not willing to tell us how they're doing business.