I did an opinion poll this morning.
I'm registered with YouGov a UK opinion poll service and get occassional polls sent to me - they have either a prize draw or a 50p (NSD1.45) bonus attached, as well as sometimes being quite interesting.
This one was in the latter category:
They started out by asking various questions on identity theft: had I been a victim of, were the banks/government/telcos doing enough to prevent it, did I feel confident with internet shopping, etc.
After about 5 questions of this nature, they had one similar to this:
Select one or more of the following:
- I think ID cards will help reduce identity theft
- I think ID cards will make banking more secure
- I think ID cards will help combat terrorism
- None of the above
Now, for those who don't know, one of the many illiberal measures being brought in by the UK government is a mandatory ID card scheme. I strongly suspect that the above poll was commissioned by the very same UK government. A poll like this is called a "push poll" - the idea is that the preceding questions put an initially undecided subject in a frame of mind to give the "right" answer - which in this case can be headlined as "XX% support ID cards - poll" where XX% is all those who didn't answer "None of the above".
I wonder how many of the "impartial surveys", both in the UK and NZ, are in fact organised along these lines. (YouGov is regarded as a reputable source - although I and others have doubts about their methodology of taking a self-selecting minority of internet users and then adjusting the figures to correct for sample bias).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Well spotted.
It concerns me that the media encourage such polls as larger percentages make more dramatic headlines. Polls sell news, critique of dodgy polls sells less news.
I assume that as you have to register for the YouGov polls, they are in effect self selecting.
YouGov is self-selecting, but the fact that they pay for opinions does slightly increase the variablity of the sample from just the opinionated. (the computer also selects you for a poll - you don't get to see one you have a view on and vote).
For their usual political and commercial research, they claim to have a statistical model that corrects for sample bias. I'm a bit sceptical - I can't see how you deal with the fact that they probably get zero respondents from, for instance, C2DEs aged over 60.
Post a Comment