Ship of Fools: Polls: What's the Point

Thread: Polls: What's the Point Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=025249

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

A few months back, I was listening to a sports talk radio program. The night before, one of the players on the local basketball team had blown the timing on a last second shot, potentially costing the team the game. The show hosts had posted a poll on their website, asking if the player who blew the shot should be cut from the team. About 10% of the people who responded said “yes.” The hosts proceeded to berate those 10% of respondents for about 15 minutes.

This article , I think, is another example of the same exercise. According to the article, when polled, 13% of Americans responded positively to a poll which asked if Obama was the anti-Christ.

This seems to pass for journalism more and more today. Create a poll that asks questions that no reasonable person would answer in the positive. Wait for someone to answer in the positive (someone always will, either because they are unreasonable or messing with the pollster). Then write an article to show us how stupid they are.

I can see the point of polling the public on issues that elected officials have control over. It gives them some idea of what laws they can pass, and what laws might cost them election next time around.

But polls where you ask people if they believe something that is demonstrably false, or at least so outlandish as to be worthy of ridicule, seem to be all about inventing content for newspapers.

Is there any point in that kind of poll? Are opinion polls about actual controversial issues worth anything? Can we demand better, or is this just something we are stuck with?

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
This seems to pass for journalism more and more today. Create a poll that asks questions that no reasonable person would answer in the positive. Wait for someone to answer in the positive (someone always will, either because they are unreasonable or messing with the pollster). Then write an article to show us how stupid they are.

Would you rather they wrote an article about the stupidity of a belief without any information as to whether anyone actually believes it?

I'll park that flippancy to one side for a moment, because I see what you're saying, and the basketball example you mention may be a form of journalistic entrapment. On the other hand, the poll may have been inspired by overhearing someone actually expressing the "unreasonable" view, and wanting to know whether this was a common belief or an isolated nutter. I'm not prepared to speculate on the motives of the people who created the poll.

Online polls are a fact of life these days because they're a quick and easy way of attracting hits and generating interaction. They're crude and unimaginative, which is why I hate them - that and the obvious sampling bias - but I don't see that any poll should be dismissed just because you* think one possible response is completely unreasonable. People believe unreasonable things all the time, in substantial numbers.

Just look at belief that homeopathy works, the moon landing was a hoax, or the Earth is 6,000 years old. Despite being completely wrong, lots of people believe them, and it's useful to know exactly how many. (So we can keep them away from sharp objects)

The problem isn't asking people whether they believe things that you* personally consider unreasonable, but the proliferation of online polls as if they mean something.

* - I don't want to make this personal, I'm just emphasising that what seems unreasonable to you may look very different to someone else.

Posted by Earwig (# 12057) on :

It's a supply and demand thing.

We have a lot of 'space' for journalism nowadays - traditional media like papers have websites that are expected to be up to the minute, there are talk radio stations, blogs, Twitter, - so there's a lot of empty space to be filled. Conversely, journalism has less money going in (certainly in the UK) than it has for a long time. So you can't employ investigative reporters to fill that space with news but you can get lots of opinion pieces in there.

And people like opinion pieces - you can agree or disagree, and get involved with the topic - leave a comment on a website or phone the station.

Polls are simply a very cheap way of generating content that listeners and readers have contributed to (drawing them into the topic being discussed), and that reporters and journalists can form easy opinions about.

It's a little depressing, and it means lots of companies can get their 'news' stories in the media simply if they publish the results of a spurious poll.

Posted by moron (# 206) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
This seems to pass for journalism more and more today. Create a poll that asks questions that no reasonable person would answer in the positive. Wait for someone to answer in the positive (someone always will, either because they are unreasonable or messing with the pollster). Then write an article to show us how stupid they are.

ISTM it's even worse than that: polls are devised to elicit particular responses and then it becomes 'news' to further a political agenda.

And yes I'm probably a nutter* but I think all the 'reporting' that US citizens have done an about face on their support for gay marriage is very likely an example of what I'm talking about. Voters in states across the country have consistently said they don't support gay marriage but these days the news is relentlessly saying that's all changed.

Has it, really? As much as it is alleged?

[Paranoid]

* I'd like to think so, anyway. [Big Grin]

Posted by The Mid (# 1559) on :

There are now (at least on the online papers) plenty of stories that are either essentially just quotes from twitter and facebook, or an entire story devoted to the social media reaction to a previous story. Seems to just be fanning the flames, but I guess it is no different from the journalists going out and spending a few hours doing vox pops prior to filing - now they just don't have to leave the studio. I see the poll stories and simply an extension of that. But I agree they are annoying, then again I am reading them so perhaps I am part of the problem.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0