John Hayes writes: >Second, a poll on the journeytoforever website is a non-random >sample due to the nature of individuals that choose to visit that type >of site in the first place. Thus, it has what we would call "limited >external validity". That is, it would do a great job of telling you >the opinions of the people that responded but you can't generalize >from those results to a population. Without the ability to generalize, >it has little utility and, as such, is a waste of time.
Yes and no. One interesting benefit of a poll like that -- it can cause you to question certain associations that you may have thought unassailable. Consider the question, "do people who have an interest in X feel this particular way about Y?" I have an interesting result of my own based on this very listgroup -- I had never realized that people who are interested and maybe even committed to biofuels might have a number of ideas about government and society that I would call pretty far "right-wing". Seeing this association (or lack of :-)) has caused me to re-examine some of my other assumptions that various such ideas are clearly "stupid" -- this person is smart about ONE thing, maybe they're not so stupid about THIS one..... Mind you, some of 'em are still wacko, but at least I took another look :-). Also, every poll on earth is biased depending on how far EXTERNAL you go in "limited external validity". Ask every human on the planet about caring for the rainforest, and you still won't know what all the parrots in there think. -K ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Make Money Online Auctions! Make $500.00 or We Will Give You Thirty Dollars for Trying! http://us.click.yahoo.com/yMx78A/fNtFAA/46VHAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
