Vic Socotra

30 July 2009

Sample Error

(Opinion Polls)

The Daily Socotra has it’s standards, and we never deviate from them except from the occasional bout of sloth and laziness.

For example, riding up in the elevator after work yesterday I saw the single-paragraph announcement on the mobile bulletin board in the car. “A special meeting of the Board will be held Tuesday, August 4th, in the East Party Room. It will be a closed meeting dealing with the Complaint of one Resident against Another.”

That is a big deal, since a Board decision could result in furniture being stacked up at the curb with the County Mounties in attendance, and I like all the parties in the controversy.

Naturally, I would have led with that story, and I had constructed the facts to support it by the time I managed to get the key to work in the lower lock to the faded salmon-colored door to Tunnel Eight.

“Jeremy accused by Jiggs,” I imagined the headline. “J’Accuse: Falling plants and cigarette butts erupt in controversy.”

It is good for both of us that I did a little of the hard gumshoe work that makes up hard-hitting objective reporting. I pulsed one of my reliable sources who was having her hair tugged by the World’s Cutest Baby at poolside.

My initial question was met with a nod. “I thought that was it, too, but I talked to Rhonda at the desk and got the scoop.” I would have taken a note, if I was not fully immersed in the water only slightly cooler than that of the bath.

“It is actually that guy with the motorcycle. He lives next to a crazy woman who thinks that he plays his music too loud and is bringing women in late at night to have noisy intimate relations.”

“I have never heard anything from my neighbors here,” I said dubiously. “Big Pink is built like a brick outhouse.”
My source smiled. “Some of the connecting walls are pretty thin and you would be surprised at what you can hear. But Security has been up to the hall in front of his place several times, and they have never heard a thing.”

I made a mental note to check things out, since I would not want to assert that a fellow biker was having much more fun than I was without direct first-hand reporting.

That is what I was thinking when I saw that the latest New York Times/CBS News poll out the health care thing is out, and naturally the Times led with it in the on-line version of the paper.

I assume it is “above the fold” in the print edition, which is where they put things they really want people to see. But since I read it on the laptop, everything is “above the fold” on my version and it doesn’t mean anything.

I don’t know Helene Cooper, Marina Stefan or Dalia Sussman, who contributed bits of commentary to the story. It was professional; I’ll give them that. Everything was spelled right, which is better than I manage most mornings, and the pictures and advertising sidebars were great, even though I was careful not to click on them.

I assume they still have copy editors at the Times, though, so it isn’t fair. A lot of papers have been laying those hard-working professionals off as unnecessary overhead. People expect to find mistakes in blogs and internet postings, researchers have discovered, and thus the Main Stream Media, pinched for advertising, has joined the race to the bottom.

I had to lay-off the copy guys at the Socotra, and now get by with people from the day-labor line at the Hispanic market down the street. It seems to be going pretty well, es que no va bien?

Anyway, The Times still looks pretty authoritative, but either things have changed or I have become too cynical about the process. I have to call what they do now more like commentary, rather than news. One of the early casualties in the newspaper business is the firewall between the OpEd pages and what is supposed to be “hard news,” or the presentation of objective accounts of the myriad of daily events.

In this case, the poll itself would be the news part, and there was no link to enable us to see either the questions of the responses, nor the sample group. All that was presented was the mode (telephone), timeframe (Friday through Tuesday), and number of adult respondents (1,050). They didn’t say if it was just land-lines (I don’t have one) or whether the calls were made before or after cocktail hour, or what basis was used to select the numbers.

Cooper, et al, reported that there was an associated margin sampling error of +/- three points, but they didn’t say why.

What do you say when someone calls you up at home and asks you to participate in a really neat poll?

“I’m drinking by the pool at the moment, but yes, I want to participate in this random act of telephonic opinion sampling?”

In my experience, polling is a complex business. The methodology is now well established in the commercial world, since real decisions costing real money are based on the results.

We try to bridge the commercial to the governmental, and usually, not very well.

I was on a project recently that involved and attempt to hire some pollsters to do sampling for the government work. The thought was that we could find out what people in another country werereally thinking, rather than relying on the blather that came from the Foreign Ministry.

There is a long tradition of trying to do polling in what we coyly called “denied areas.” Gaining objective insight on what was really happening in places behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtains was considered to be important, and we never did very well at it.

We certainly missed the fact that all of Eastern Europe was prepared to shrug and walk away from the Soviet Union. Earlier, we had made a stab at polling in the northern part of Vietnam.

Sample question: “So how is the bombing offensive working out for you?”

Of course I am kidding. This is serious business, and the results of the poll are going to be the topic of serious discussions by senior officials this morning who are empowered to do real things that cost real money.

From what I can gather, people are concerned about what is being talked about here, and are more than a little apprehensive. They believe there is a problem, and are concerned about the prospective solutions.

Shoot. You and I could have told them that if they called us up The coverage betrays either the sad state of either journalism, conducted the week before Congress fled in disarray from Our Fair City, indicates the people have it right on. We completely understand what the government is up to.

Answering one of many questions, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans.

Pollsters normally parse their questions carefully, and ask the same thing with slightly different words. This is a sophisticated business, and nuance can have enormous impact.

In response to another question, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.

If this wasn’t about something really serious it would be a hoot. Of course we are all concerned, and any of us with something to lose wants to have a better idea of what is going to be done to us.

Thankfully, we have skilled pollsters and journalists to interpret what is going on for us. I was listening to some of them on National Public Radio, which I have murmuring in the background most of my waking hours.

They were talking about the mandate for change in the Health Care that had elected the President.

One sort of timid voice said “Didn’t the swing vote go to President Obama because people thought we were sliding into another Great Depression?”

There was an uneasy pause, when they realized how wrong they were, and then they went back to talking about health care.

Close Window