--- kakki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How do we know what those 80% individually thought? > The poll question is > too broadly posed to know what "actions" > specifically they think we have > done to lead to the attack. Whatever. >
Exactly - that's the problem with polls. They ask questions in a particular way and they just want a yes/no or "Fully agree", "Somewhat agree", "Somewhat disagree", "Fully disagree" kind of way - or there's those polls that ask, on a scale of 1-10, how much do you think this statement is true. They don't ask people to explain or expound on their response - they just want quick, simple answers; and from that, if it's one of those 4-choices types, they can then split them in two. So if you have 10% of people who fully agree with a statement and 70% who somewhat agree, then suddenly you have 80% who agree, and so on. If you ask the question, "Do you think the actions of X led to Y?" you're most likely to get a majority agreeing with that to some degree. If you ask, "Did they deserve it?" you're only going to get a fringe element of people agreeing with it. Also, depending on who is doing the poll and who's paying them to do it, the questions (and the results) are skewed to get the results the people who are paying for it want to hear. It's gotten to the point where, if people call me at home to ask me to participate in a poll and I smell that kind of thing going on, I decline to do the poll, or sometimes, I'm almost ashamed to admit (but not quite - on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being not ashamed at all, and 10 being ashamed to the point of wearing a hair shirt, I'd have to answer with a 4, or a 4.5), I deliberately give answers that are totally neutral, or where the answer to one question totally contradicts the answer to another. Or I ask them if I can choose a number in between (like 4.5 instead of 4 or 5). ===== Catherine Toronto ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
