2001 UCLA Internet Census

Merry_B.Buck writes: "UCLA's Center for Communication Policy has finished its second annual survey on Internet usage. Some interesting claims: online shoppers believe prices are lower in brick-and-mortar stores, and experienced Interneters are less likely to use chatrooms, play games, and download music than their newbie counterparts. An unrelated report from Forrester Research claims that Internet newcomers tend to gather at LookSmart and MSN portals, while old-timers prefer InfoSpace and Yahoo. [I'm suspicious of both surveys -- neither had a Cowboy Neal option.]"

Comments

How to Spin Surveys

[Alien54]

The suggestion that comes to my mind is, "strongly" and "weakly" are weasel words that the surveyors can use to nudge the outcomes of the survey any way they like.

Mosty professional surveys by politcal consultants do that anyhow, by prefixing the survey question with biased viewpoints.

For Example:

1. Are you in favor of Advancing Technology?
2. Are you in favor of Innovation?
3. Are you in favor of Making Computers Easier to Use?
4. Would you consider supporting Microsoft if I told you that Microsoft was a Leader in Innovation, Advancing Technology, and Making Computers Easier to Use?

You would? Could you sign this petition?

End result: Most People support Microsft for being a Leader in Innovation, for Advancing Technology, and Making Computers Easier to Use

You can see how the biase was applied. you list out all the good things that people agree with, then align your candidate, product, company etc with the desired characteristics. This is far more complex then finding out how people really feel about something. But most posters are truly clueless about reading human emotion, and so you use a simply list.

For example "Strongly supporting the war " covers a world of sins, including Strongly supporting with an Evil Laff, or with Anger, or with Pain, or with Joy (happy to go to war) or what ever.

So it really depends on what the purpose of the survey is. Simply put while a majority of Americans do support the war, many do so with some kind of second thoughts. It is definitely not "Rah Rah Rah!" for this whole thing.

While surveys should ask what you "need to know", what you think you need to know, and what you really need to know often differ. To say that 90% of the people support the war is misleading if you do not know that many people have reservation, and will cut someone to ribbons when they start to really screw up.