Almost all of the polls that I have seen discard or do not ask the "don't care" option. I believe that in this way the views of 80% of the population are ignored.
Some years ago I was asked for my views about the styling of a lawn mower. The questionnaire has been written by an artist (I have nothing against artists - the artist who runs the website http://linkerrdesign.myzen.co.uk/ is my sister). When it comes to lawn mowers however I could not get across to the questioner that I am more interested in the power of the machine, its safety features (electric mowers are the norm in most UK gardens) and so on. I suspect that the same applies to questionnaires on metrication. In addition, the wording of any questionnaire often pushes the result one way or the other. _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Humphreys Sent: 12 June 2010 20:29 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:47749] RE: Post regarding coinage I'll get ready for the abuse ;-) but the BWMA site had a load of poll results on it - not sure if it still has. Also - we get a glut of them anytime metrication comes up in the news. Some polls have 'loaded' questions so it biases things from the start - however a lot of polls are fair in their questioning. The polls tend to come from the poll companies and - Sky News, Newspapers, teletext, SMS based, shows on BBC, ITV etc, Question time reactions. All of which are done and tend not to have those results available on the net over time. So a lot are from memory. Off this list I'd make assumptions too. Because there tends to be few 'millitant' opinionists on this subject there tends to be few organised 'mass voting' activities that might skew thing. I seem to remember that metric was most popular in the early 70's (due to decimalisation at the time?). Even then I think it was about 40% favouring metric. I'll see if I can find something when I get a moment. > Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:11:22 +0100 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: [USMA:47748] RE: Post regarding coinage > > > I would be interested to see examples of those opinion polls. Are you able to oblige Stephen? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Stephen Humphreys" <[email protected]> > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, 12 June, 2010 7:52:01 PM > Subject: [USMA:47746] RE: Post regarding coinage > > I'm not so sure (of the connection). It's not usual for me to disagree with you, Carleton but here in the UK polls tend to confirm a preference to imperial over metric (don't shoot the messenger!) however when the pound coin came in and the pound note went out I remember no reaction or 'anti-feeling'. I still remain confused at why there's the anti- feeling in the USA. > (still 1-0, although USA deserved one) > _____ Get a free e-mail account with Hotmail. Sign-up <http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/197222280/direct/01/> now.
