Carol Goar has an article, in this mornings Toronto Star, about the problems pollsters are having actually getting responses from people whose thoughts they are trying to ferret out.
Seems 8 out of 10 people hang up on the pollsters when they call. I'll bet, given the tricks electronic phones are geared for now, any incoming phone number, with a pesky 800, 822, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, 880, 881, 882, or 888 prefix, can simply be blocked for the price of a few moments pouring over the instruction booklet that came with the phone. Goar has been talking to Angus Reid, the guy who started the Angus Reid Group, a polling firm, which he sold it to to the Paris based conglomerate Ipsos.
Well Reid is now hot to trot about web based surveys like the YouGov in Britain. I'm not completely clear on YouGov's methodology but from a quick look at their site it does, offhand, look random, but hey, eh, maybe Reid is thinking about modifying the Brit's approach.
Oops, no he doesn't seem to be modifying it, in fact, it looks like he may have adopted their approach holus-bolus:
The new company's research would be conducted entirely online. Respondents would be recruited over the Internet for a 100,000-person national panel. For each poll, a statistically representative sample would be drawn. Questionnaires would be sent by email, to be completed at the participants' convenience. Cash incentives would be provided.
Carol Goar
The Toronto Star
March 28, 2007
YouGov's methodology is to obtain responses from an invited group of Internet users, and then to filter these responses in line with demographic information. It draws these demographically-representative samples from a panel of more than 150,000 people in the UK.
Anyway, my point in this note, isn't really polling, either the old annoying phone or door banging way, it's a particular couple of sentences in Goar's story and the use of two words which may or may not have been intended to convey an impression.
He [Reid] can show respondents pictures. Recently, for example, he provided a video clip of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion speaking English to anglophone voters and a comparable clip of Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking French to francophone voters. He asked both groups to rate the linguistic competence of the leader in question. Only 56 per cent of anglophones considered Dion's English satisfactory. Harper's French was given a passing grade by 81 per cent of francophones.
Carol Goar
The Toronto Star
March 28, 2007
The two sentences are italicized and the words are in bold face. I wonder what impression is being spun, or trying to be spun, and I wonder who is trying to do the spin? It could be, of course, that I'm just far too too skeptical about anything I seen written down or spoken by someone in the MSM.
Ignoring the percentages, the word satisfactory seems just not quite as good as passing.
Is this what Reid might have said to the reporter?
Is it what the reporter gleamed herself from looking at the survey results?
Is the reporter trying to tell the reader that francophones think Harper speaks good French? - "He passed with 81%!" Or is it that Harper speaks what what French he has well?
Is the reporter trying to tell the reader that anglophones think Dion does not speak English well? "He passed with 56%!" Or is it that Dion does not speak good English?
Yeah, it must be just me, I should get out and enjoy the sun and spring weather.
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