You don't understand polling. If you are going to ask people to place themselves on a scale, the people you ask must understand the categories. If you use categories not easily understood by the majority you have a useless question. Now there are sophisticated polling that ask a series of questions to affix people in whatever categories …
You don't understand polling. If you are going to ask people to place themselves on a scale, the people you ask must understand the categories. If you use categories not easily understood by the majority you have a useless question. Now there are sophisticated polling that ask a series of questions to affix people in whatever categories you want to use. These of course are better than asking people to self-identify because most people don't like to be seen on the extremes and may fear persecution (whether accurate or not) if they self identify in certain ways. The prime example is polling on drug use done by schools. What student is going to admit doing illegal substances to a institution that could cause them harm.
So Dave you are pointing out that, of necessity, the polls have to operate within whatever "definitional" narrative has been established. This would explain a lot about how polls sometimes miss the mark in terms of uncovering how people really are thinking or feeling. The polls can operate only within categories that have been established in the past and therefore may tend to miss information that deviates from that.
Yes, in general. But, there are ways to get around this. Take racism for example. If you ask people to place themselves on a scale of how racist they are, you aren't going to get very many to admit any racism. But, in the GSS data and other more sophisticated polling, they ask a series of questions that indirectly establish racism, and set those questions in different series, like intermarriage questions and neighborhood questions and diversity questions. And you can add questions or subtract questions that no longer are valid as you go forward. Peoples opinions often contradict internally on a variety of elements. So, you need to have a variety of ways to ask about the same thing and then correlate that with what you are trying to understand.
General Social Survey...........been asking questions since 1972 so we can track trends. National Opinion Research Center at U. of Chicago. (Independent from the university)
You don't understand polling. If you are going to ask people to place themselves on a scale, the people you ask must understand the categories. If you use categories not easily understood by the majority you have a useless question. Now there are sophisticated polling that ask a series of questions to affix people in whatever categories you want to use. These of course are better than asking people to self-identify because most people don't like to be seen on the extremes and may fear persecution (whether accurate or not) if they self identify in certain ways. The prime example is polling on drug use done by schools. What student is going to admit doing illegal substances to a institution that could cause them harm.
So Dave you are pointing out that, of necessity, the polls have to operate within whatever "definitional" narrative has been established. This would explain a lot about how polls sometimes miss the mark in terms of uncovering how people really are thinking or feeling. The polls can operate only within categories that have been established in the past and therefore may tend to miss information that deviates from that.
Yes, in general. But, there are ways to get around this. Take racism for example. If you ask people to place themselves on a scale of how racist they are, you aren't going to get very many to admit any racism. But, in the GSS data and other more sophisticated polling, they ask a series of questions that indirectly establish racism, and set those questions in different series, like intermarriage questions and neighborhood questions and diversity questions. And you can add questions or subtract questions that no longer are valid as you go forward. Peoples opinions often contradict internally on a variety of elements. So, you need to have a variety of ways to ask about the same thing and then correlate that with what you are trying to understand.
What is GSS data? thx
General Social Survey...........been asking questions since 1972 so we can track trends. National Opinion Research Center at U. of Chicago. (Independent from the university)