I am not sure I'd jump to any firm conclusions based on a sample survey of 206 -- especially one that hasn't had the benefit of even a rudimentary sample design and an even more flawed analysis -- if one can call it that.
Certainly, I'd do my best to limit any tentative conclusions to the population that visited the monitor in a given period the sampling was done.
There is a reason, other than lack of something better to do, that people invest lots of money and time to study the science of statistics and eventually specialize in survey work or more simply "sampling". And there is an on-going effort by profession statisticians to communicate the knowledge base of this subject, most notably examplified in the wide array of textbooks on sampling aimed at various levels of compentence, as well as learned journals for the pros themselves.
However, I hasten to add that Monitor is hardly alone in not consulting professional statisticians with specialized knowlede of sampling. Many a time even researchers at universities do overlook the necessity of consulting with a specialist in sampling and/or experiment design before spending oodles of money and time on a given study. By the time the researcher limps over to the desk of a statisticians, pretty much all that can be done is a post mortem, for by the time the patient (the study) has long been dead -- often beyond the point of ressucitation!
As for this particular "poll", why is the sample size so small given that the poppulation of Ugandans abroad is in the thousands, may be even hundreds of thousands? How large was the sampling frame? Was the sampling effort so feeble as to make the results useless? What design, if any, was used? What were the error bounds of whatever the estimate was?
Why wasn't the fatct that Ugandans abroad have an internet discussion group specifically devoted to federo, as federalism known in Ugandan parlance ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), not mentioned in the article? Why wasn't that group contacted for its opinion on the matter?
According the Odoki Commission, 65% support federo in Uganda, and 97% in Buganda as reported in a press release of the Uganda Government on April 15, 2003: Museveni can't grant Buganda federo - Reform, and available on the web at www.government.go.ug/press_releases/index.php?myId=3. Given that federo is very popular in Uganda, and that Ugandans in the diaspora (abroad) are a sub-population of Ugandans at home, how come that supposedly only 26% of us support federo? Or could it be that the Monitor takes us to be uncritical readers of whatever it publishes?
Giving us anectodes of what one person going under the pseudoname 'Muganda' and the like is hardly a substitute for incisive and well researched journalism.
I am afraid, I cannot help but give the Monitor a big fat "F" for this piece. But considering that there was some attempt to use sampling, make that an F plus, whatever that is worth.
If the Monitor wants to be taken seriously, it will have to do much better, quite a bit more energetically and enthusiastically.
J. Ssemakula
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