I just got called for survey purposes (about the economy, health care, and the like); I thought that it was a bit odd when they asked me if I was a blogger (not just a journalist), but hey, maybe that’s the new best standard? And they seemed happy enough when I said that I generally blog about entertainment topics. At any rate, I was willing to devote five minutes of my time to the cause of statistics.
Or at least I was until I heard the first question: “do you think the country is basically going in the right direction or do you think things are going pretty seriously off track?” Yeah, survey purposes, right.
Time to go e-mail my various representatives, I think, just to provide a bit of a nudge in the direction I want?
Update: I have been convinced by some of my commentors that, at the very least, the title of this post is inappropriate.
Post Revisions:
- December 17, 2009 @ 21:47:42 [Current Revision] by David Carlton
- December 16, 2009 @ 19:38:37 by David Carlton
Posts
I think that’s a pretty straight question, not necessarily indicative of a push poll. When Ed Koch asked New Yorkers “How’m I doing?”, that wasn’t a push poll.
12/16/2009 @ 8:37 pm
No, my anonymous interlocutor, a straight question would have had a more nuanced range of positive, neutral, and negative responses, rather than a guardedly positive response and a strongly negative response.
12/16/2009 @ 9:16 pm
Anonymous was me.
12/16/2009 @ 9:52 pm
Hi, John!
12/16/2009 @ 10:22 pm
Actually David, the right direction/wrong direction question really is quite standard on a poll — many organizations ask this question as a general way to gauge national mood. Binary questions are not rare in public polling. As someone who has actually received a real push poll (“If you were to learn that XXXX fathered an illegitimate child, would that change your opinion of him?”) I feel safe in saying that if this question was the most biased you got, the poll was probably legitimate.
12/17/2009 @ 6:42 am
Huh, interesting; sounds like I’m just wrong about the binary aspect of the question. To me, though, “basically” versus “pretty seriously” don’t sound parallel – do I have a tin ear there, too? Or is phrasing the branches in a parallel manner not considered important?
Good point about the hypothetical question, this certainly isn’t an example of that.
12/17/2009 @ 9:37 am
Well, I agree that the branches should be phrased in a more neutral way; “seriously” is a weird thing to say, but could just be a novice pollster error. However, it’s tough to say how this would bias responses. Because people generally like to sound level headed, putting “basically” up against “seriously” might encourage people to say “right direction” who might otherwise have said “wrong direction”, just because the “wrong direction” option here sounds extreme.
12/17/2009 @ 6:53 pm
Okay, fair enough. So: I withdraw the title of this blog post, I still have a hard time imagining a good reason for somebody to phrase the question that way, but I accept (and this is a useful reminder) that “making a mistake” is a possible bad reason. And, if it is an attempt to skew the results, it could be an attempt either way.
12/17/2009 @ 8:24 pm