On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> A dumbass poll by Harris to promote a book on how the wingnuts are
> allegedly taking over has the liberals all excited. Key findings, followed
> by why it's a dumbass poll.
>
> ---
>
> <
> http://news.harrisinteractive.com/profiles/investor/ResLibraryView.asp?BzID=1963&ResLibraryID=37050&Category=1777
> >
>
> Mar 24, 2010
> "Wingnuts" and President Obama
> A socialist? A Muslim? Anti-American? The Anti-Christ? Large minorities of
> Americans hold some remarkable opinions
>
> A new book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America by John
> Avlon describes the large numbers of Americans who hold extreme views of
> President Obama. This Harris Poll seeks to measure how many people are
> involved. It finds that 40% of adults believe he is a socialist. More than
> 30% think he wants to take away Americans' right to own guns and that he is
> a Muslim. More than 25% believe he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the
> United States to a world government, has done many things that are
> unconstitutional, that he resents America's heritage, and that he does what
> Wall Street tells him to do.
>
> More than 20% believe he was not born in the United States, that he is "the
> domestic enemy the U.S. Constitution speaks of," that he is racist and
> anti-American, and that he "wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist
> attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers." Fully 20% think he is
> "doing many of the things that Hitler did," while 14% believe "he may be the
> anti-Christ" and 13% think "he wants the terrorists to win."
>
> ...
>
> ----
>
> <
> http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/03/polling-on-presidential-pejoratives-.html
> >
>
> Polling on Presidential Pejoratives
> [Gary Langer]
> March 24, 2010 8:27 AM
>
> Whatever profoundly negative things people might think about Barack Obama,
> a new poll out today demonstrates splendidly how not to measure them.
>
> It nails the negativity, all right; this project purports to tote up
> responses to a list of harsh criticisms of the president – e.g., that he’s
> “anti-American,” “a racist,” “wants… an excuse to take dictatorial powers,”
> “is doing many of the things that Hitler did” and “may be the Antichrist.”
>
> Hot words, those. The survey, done by Harris Interactive, apparently was
> designed to test the theories in a book claiming the “lunatic fringe is
> hijacking America.” The purpose seems to have been to see how many people
> the pollsters could get to agree to pejorative statements about Obama. Quite
> a few, it turns out – but with what I see as a highly manipulative approach
> to questionnaire design.
>
> I’ll lay off the sampling, though this survey was done among people who
> sign up to click through questionnaires via the Internet in exchange for
> points redeemable for cash and gifts – not a probability sample. Been there
> before. This time let’s just look at what it asked.
>
> The poll starts by telling respondents “here are some things people have
> said about President Obama,” then asking if they think each is true or
> false. Fifteen statements follow, with all (excluding “he is a Muslim”)
> unrelentingly negative. “True” answers run from a high of 40 percent, for
> “he is a socialist,” to a low of 13 percent, for “he wants the terrorists to
> win.”
>
> The problems are fundamental. “Some people have said” is a biasing
> introductory phrase; it imbues the subsequent statements with an air of
> credibility – particularly when you don’t note that others say something
> else. (That approach can have problems of its own; the “some people” vs.
> “other people” format implies equivalence.)
>
> The subsequent statements, for their part, are classically unbalanced –
> there’s no alternative proposition to consider. A wealth of academic
> literature, neatly summarized here, demonstrates that questions constructed
> in this fashion – true/false, agree/disagree – carry a heavy dose of what’s
> known as acquiescence bias. They overstate agreement with whatever’s been
> posited, often by a very substantial margin. (This reflects avoidance of
> cognitive burden, which tends to happen disproportionately with
> less-educated respondents, as is reflected in Harris’ results.)
>
> Using all negative statements, rather than a mix of negative and positive
> ones, reflects another non-standard approach, one that can further bias
> responses. (The ordering of items, unclear in the Harris release, can be
> troublesome as well.)
>
> Another problem, which I discuss here, is the challenge of over-literalism
> in evaluating survey results of this type. Rather than answering disparaging
> poll questions literally, people who are ill-disposed toward the subject may
> simply use these questions as an opportunity to express their general
> antipathy – not as a thought-out endorsement of the specific posit. And the
> use of hot-button invective is ill-advised in its own right; respondents may
> just blow it back.
>
> Admittedly it’s a challenge to measure these sorts of sentiments. Unless
> carefully crafted, with balance and an approach that encourages due
> consideration and probes for meaning, simply asking the question can turn
> into little more than the old reporter’s trick of piping quotes. It’s a
> shopworn use of true/false and agree/disagree questions, one long overdue
> for retirement.
>
> Harris indeed goes the next step by reporting its results as what its
> respondents’ “believe” and as opinions they “hold,” as if they themselves
> came up with these notions, rather than having them one-sidedly set before
> them on a platter. Call me what you will – and I know it can get nasty out
> there – but from my perspective, this is not good polling practice.
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