Surveyed

[redbird]

I just had a nice chat with a man who called taking a political survey. He asked for the "male head of household," and when I explained that wasn't possible right now, for the "female head of household." So I answered a lot of questions about politics, including recent and upcoming elections. I told him flatly that some of the questions weren't meaningful, that some metaphors should be taken out and shot, and asked, given that we have absentee ballots, why he kept saying that "a lot of people were unable [sic] to vote in" specific recent elections. (I think, though, that they've been instructed not to suggest that people had chosen not to vote.)

A lot of the questions were of the form "Party X says Y about themselves. Does that make you much more likely, a somewhat more likely, or a little more likely to support them, or does it make no difference?" When he got to one about the Republicans opposing same-sex marriage and "abortion on demand" [not a phrase I'd heard in a while] he told me his form wouldn't enable him to put down that it made me less likely to support them, and tried again to get me to choose one of the options given. So I explained that I consider their positions un-American, and that it makes me less likely to support them, and that if his form won't handle that, put "refused to answer." Near the end, he listed slogans used by each party and, again, much more likely to support through no difference. On almost all of them, my answer was "that's a meaningless statement, so it makes no difference."

Another oddity was that, after saying he was going to list some "people and organizations" and ask my opinions of them, he asked about political parties, Senator Clinton, and then "gay marriage." My reaction was "that's not an organization," but given the available options, I said I strongly approved of it. In fact, I approve of same-sex marriage to the same extent, and with the same reservations, as I do of mixed-sex marriage, but I'm sure their forms and data-crunching aren't subtle enough to handle that.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I did phone surveys for a research organization when I was in high school -- mostly political, some market research. I knew something about the business as it was 20 years ago, though I recognize it's changed quite a lot since then.

The person you were talking to was reading from a script, with very little permission to deviate from it. The point of a survey (a legitimate survey -- my experience predates push-polling) is to ask the SAME questions to a large group of people. The questioners are supposed to vary the order of questions in a standard way. Just in case, for instance, voters tend to feel differently about Senator Clinton when she is mentioned after discussing the Republican Party, than they do when she is mentioned after discussing the Democratic Party, or Wellesley College, or something else.

It is common practice for PR people, in politics and elsewhere, to bring great optimism to their work. So much optimism it would seem pathological in other circumstances. They were trying to assess how well their ads were working. The worst possibility they can imagine for an ad is, "no effect." Advertisers and marketing folks put these surveys together...they can't imagine a PR position that actively drives people away.

[redbird]

I know, but (a) it was a stupider script than usual, and (b) usually they are allowed to say something like "okay, I'll put 'refused' for that" rather than insist that I say a, b, or c when I've explicitly said that none of them is a valid answer. That's why he got the rant about the bloody Republicans (and yes, I did use that adjective) being un-American.