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Will Cellular Phones Skew Survey Results?
FriedEgg writes "Recently, many people have started to forgo traditional landline telephones in favor of cellular phones only. This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money. While they recognize the exclusion of cellular only users can skew their results, they're not yet sure how much... because they're unable to survey cellular only users to find out their demographic information. Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway. If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
I would have to agree that such is the case. Land-line users are generally luddites/conservatives, while cell phone users are normally hip liberals.
...Of you who slept through History class, 'Dewey Defeats Truman' refers to the 1948 presidential election in which it was projected a man named Dewey would defeat encumbant president Truman, due to skewed mail-in poll results.
Link is to Historybuff for more info. Dewey Defeats Truman
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Truman lost?
The following statement is false.
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to my world.
Haven't the Americans just got a 50 million list of folks who don't want to be called.
Do the folks who fit those two categories have a common demographic?
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
A lot of times people will or will not vote for someone based on how well they are doing. People like winners.
Another example would be the 2000 election. Bush would have won CA, since a lot of CA liberals (our favorite appelation for them) were going to vote Green since CA is sufficiently liberal. When they discovered what was happening, many switched to Gore.
Also, money, which like it or not is invaluable for elections and free speech (thank you for abridging free speech through campaign finance reform), is given to people leading in polls. Leading in the polls makes it easier to raise money.
So inaccurate polls can really make things screwy.
I would have to say that there is already an effect from the number of people with Caller ID or who screen their calls with answering machines. I know I don't bother picking up if there's no caller info or it says "GALLUP POLL".
The question for the market research is:
Does the universe of people who have cell phones correlate to the universe of respondents that I'm trying to reach or does it introduce bias? (I know just enough to get myself in trouble here...)
e.g. if 55% of your population is A, and 45% is B, and the cellphone population is also 55% A / 45% B, then it will have no impact on the results. OTOH, if the cellphone population is 75% A / 25% B, then there is going to be bias that will have to be corrected for in order to extrapolate back to the main population. (Guaranteed there is some wrong terminology there...)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
The 18-24 demographic is the one least likely to vote anyway
Some excerpts from the first article:
In an unscientific poll last month by CNN and Money magazine, 41 percent of more than 11,000 voluntary participants said they would be inclined to pull the plug on their land lines and go entirely wireless.
Unfortunately no reason is stated, but I have a feeling that "so these stupid pollsters don't call and pester me" is one of the leading reasons.
A recent Sprint Wireless survey of more than 500 college students found that half are cell-only customers.
No kidding, Sherlock. Think about it. Students are always on the move, changing addresses frequently. It is MUCH easier to have a cell phone only than to deal with changing land lines every 6 months.Students are also the demographic group with too many other things to do and think about than answer some stupid survey.
"That makes it an opt-in situation where the cellphone user somehow signs up to allow researchers to call," she said. "Who's going to do that?"
Like....DUUUUUUH! Get a clue already! YOU'RE UNWANTED!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I've been wondering whether or not I need a landline anymore. But now I know what to do. By god, I shall skew pollsters' results no longer! Mr. Phone Company Guy, activate this phone line!
karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon....
The problem is that many of the people in this business aren't mathematician and if they are then they are at best only second rates ones.
This poblem doesn't appear only in public survey - in fact most "statistics" in natural and political sciences are usually fucked. Most mathematicians don't care - we know that significance tests don't really give any viable results etc. So if people aren't interested in maths or aren't willing to invest time to understand it, then let them believe their rubbish.
Nevertheless all this whining about "skewed" surveys is meaningless, it's like complaing that the moon is made from bad tasting cheese.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
And if you think those in the business are bad at maths, think of who the customers are. Politicians and the such. Notorious maths flunkies. Show them some fancy pie charts and percent signs, especially those in their favor, and they're your best friend forever.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
With number portability and the switch to wireless only phones. Who is going to know what is a cell phone and what is not. The major reason cell phones are not being called now is the number isnt as well know. If you start telling people your home phone is your cell number then your going to get the junk and polling calls to that number the same as you would to a copper connected phone.
Laws or not, the caller is not going to be able to tell one from another.
Seriously, cry me a river. So, politicians won't know what to think. TV execs won't know what good shows to cancel next. Phone polling is the equivalent of jury duty and we know who is sitting on juries in this country. So next time a telemarketer calls, just tell them "I love chinks."
(before people get all politically upset do a little research, I can't help it that you don't watch Conan O'Brien or even have a sense of humour)
Why can't the wireless companies set up a way to allow the caller to pay the charges? Politicians would get more accurate surveys, wireless companies would get another revenue stream, polling companies would finally be able to reach those elusive cell-only customers... everyone wins!
Well okay, the consumer gets screwed with a bunch of survey calls that they don't want... but really, how important are the consumers anyway?
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
We have in place now that polls with telephony-based systems. As we reach into the ether. It's been +/- whatever for too long.
.sig, Botunda want white women...!!! yes...
Time to take a count for the US system of polling.
What if your votes were counted when you opt'ed and just placed wherever!?!?!
Never Let Bush... Ever!
There are so many ways to reach people and poll them this days that this is harldy going to make a difference. If you run a telephone poll and, say, an internet poll (more seriously than these obviously) you can quickly figure out the missing bits. Furthermore nowadays you have technologies that let you know a lot about your customers/voters without polling.
On the other hand, it seems that nowadays politics is very influenced by polls. So what could happen is that horrible, privacy-killing laws could be passed because the politicians rely too much on telephone polls, and don't realize that cell-phone users value their privacy too.
My Stack Overflow user
I'm somewhat reminded of the old Animaniacs skit from years ago.
Seriously, I get a lot of calls from telemarketers and poll people. They annoy me more than other people because I sleep during the day, but for the most part I accept it as a consequence of being in the phone book. Anyone can look up my name, phone number, and address in the local white pages, run to a terminal, and google one or all of those to bug me.
Every once in a while if the poll topic sounds interesting I'll do the poll-- well, OK, so I did it twice in the last six months, and really only because the interviewer sounded cute-- but the point is that I sometimes do the telephone polls in an attempt to influence the bias one way or another. If it's a poll I feel strongly about (like, say, the grocery stores in my area-- all of which are crap, thank you very much), I'll do it with the attempt to get something better in the area. If it's about gaming or electronics or somesuch, hell yeah I'll do it-- I like talking about games, and if you say that doing the survey gets me free stuff I'll ask to do it twice.
The point is that not everyone unconditionally says "fuck off" to anyone who doesn't get recognized on their Caller ID. So telephone polls are skewed, simply because the people who do them anyway are either too dumb to say no or think they can change the results with it. Which one of these two categories I fall into is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
"Our job is to skew public opinion by gross misrepresentation of facts"
In elections, the only poll that counts is the one where you cast your vote.
For other things, I don't give a rat fuck whether people prefer toothpaste with tartar cleaning or not.
Although people believe that polls are useful in gauging public opinion, they're really just used to try and convince people of things they don't like. "See, polls show people want chips implanted in their brains for government tracking, so that's what you should agree to"
The actual Dewey Defeats Truman headline was based more on early election returns than skewed polling. The famous error made concerning polling in the 1948 election was that Gallup simply stopped doing polls two weeks before the election and proclaimed that Dewey would win, not taking into account the massive sea change in public opinion that can occur over a two week span.
The famous example of a poll gone bad because of telephone ownership statistics was the poll used by the magazine The Literary Digest to predict the 1936 presidential election between FDR and Al Landon. The magazine mailed ballots to 10 million individuals with listed phone numbers and/or car registrations, and tallied up roughly 2 million returned ballots. Based on the results, the magazine predicted a Landon victory, while in fact the result was a 46-state landslide for FDR (and remember, there were only 48 states in 1936)!
The sample error in this survey was that telephone ownership and car ownership did not correlate to likeliness to vote in 1936. In 1936, at the height of the Great Depression, telephones and cars were luxury items that few people besides the wealthiest Americans could afford. The poor and lower class who were more likely to vote for FDR were not even sent ballots, so there was no way for their voices to be heard in this survey.
The impact of this flawed survey was such that within a short time after the publication of the survey, The Literary Digest would go out of business.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
...whose election was decided by just over 500 votes. That's what, a small high school?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Surprisingly, the parent didn't post any links to the famous picture of the debacle. Well, I guess it turns out there are a few of them.
Here are three, including a wide shot I hadn't seen before..
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The article doesn't provide many numbers, so I better provide some. In Denmark, there are more cellular subscribers now than fixed line subscribers. Of the 11 houses on our street, 2 only use cellular phones, and one of these has ADSL but no fixed line subscription.
In my nephiew's class, 2 families out of 24 don't have a phone number that belongs to a fixed line.
Currently, a fixed line costs 255 euros to create in Denmark, and 16 euros a month. It's cheaper per minute than a mobile phone, unless you call a mobile phone - in which case the mobile phone is cheaper per minute. Add to that the costs of buying a phone.
A mobile phone can be bought very cheap - used phones are normally 15-30 euros, there is no subscriptions fees and it's now down to 9 cents a minute outside workhours and down to 11 cents a minute in workhours. All prices include the Danish 25% Value Added Tax.
So in general, mobile phones are cheaper for most people, and more and more people are abandoning their fixed lines. The skew is already here and it's growing.
Who cares if pollsters can't get accurate results, although newspapers, TV seem to love polls I'm sure that most people couldn't care less what the polls say and are happy to wait until the results of ( whatever ) are announced offically.
I am available for ALL telephone polls. Please call me. If you do not know the number please look for it in your local telephone directory. I do however have a small charge of $110 USD for each call that is made to my telephone that does not concern my personal or my family's day to day operations. These charges will be on your next telephone billing statement. Thank you and please continue to call me with any polling questions you have, I will gladly answer all of them. Per the DRM, all information provided by me, the sole content provider and author of MY digital information, all records will be kept and forwarded to the RIAA for billing purposes to your organization's accounts payable department. As the sole content provider, and since that information now travels down a digital telephone line, the DRM and the RIAA now protect me by law. have a nice day.
Not quite on topic but - The best way to deal with unwanted callers is to make a game of how long you can keep them on the line. Listen to enough of what they have to say to make them think you're interested and then say "hold on a moment - there is someone at the door..." and then go watch TV or something. If you want to try really hard to win the game come back every minute or so and say "sorry about this - hang on just another moment".
Sig is taking a break!
between them not calling me in the first place (i.e. on a cell number), and my hanging up on them as soon as the reason for the call is disclosed (which is my normal practice on my landline phone)? They don't get an answer either way.
Polls are just one part in the attempt to brainwash and manipulate the puiblic. How better do I sell them, say, a politican? Polls suggest voters like guys with sideburns. Politican grows sideburns instead of focussing on making good policy, Public manipulated. So maybe if polls become unusable and so unreliable, they will finally stop doing them.
Sounds like a good thing in my book.
I propose that we Always-Online types are often of radical political persuasions. And because our opinions are not reflected in the polls, the polls come out looking LESS radical, and more mainstream than America really is in reality.
And since one big factor in politics is The BandWagon Factor, our absence from political polls means that America is being deradicalized. Look for example at online polls. DO they have somewhat different results from telephone polls? You bet!
What can we Always-Onliners do about it? VOTE!!
See you at the polling place.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
In Denmark we got number portability for land-lines a couple of years ago, so area codes do not necessarily tell you where people live. Since telephone pollsters use area codes to make sure they have geographical coverage, this presents a similar problem.
What does it matter in a democracy where near a 60% of the population with a right to vote simply does not bother to vote?
And the problem here is that most of the apathic percentage is the one that most could mean a change, the better educated, the most liberal...
No wonder that no Republican Gov ever bothers with campaigns in favor of participation among youth!!! Thus we see a great country going down the drain led by lobbies, armament interests and the most conservative branches of the different Christian sects...
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
So, your post was USofA-centric.
I'm american, too, just not the same way you are.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
an upset tummy?
S -P lant.html
.contributes to a lot of execrabilious billyonerrors also?
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-TUM
probully
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... get ready to see the light/feel better.
Gotta wonder if there is a market for aluminium-foil faraday-cage skull-caps these days!
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
First, i can add another phone for only $10, vs the 20 a month a pay for a land line (and they want to charge you MORE if you dont want long distance)
Second, I havent gotten a SINGLE telemarketer call on my cell phone which i give out more than my land line number. So now I save time, money and sanity!
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
You can buy inflatable sheep in sex shops there.
errr... polls are already suggesting that Hillary can beat W. This suggests to me that day has come.
The only thing better than no polling data is unreliable poll results that nobody beleives. Then, we're all stuck having to make up our own minds rather than follow the bleating flock just to affirm the polls.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I _want_ the world to reflect my tastes. I want companies to introduce products that match what I want, I want my favourite TV programs to get more airtime, I want my political positions to be listened to and regarded as significant.
Opinion polls are an excellent way to do this. I've not been invited to participate in any number by phone but have several by e-mail or banner ads. Unless it's simply not possible for me to participate for some reason, I _will_ complete the poll. Yes, it's a small contribution but it's another point in their dataset and it corresponds to _me_ and helps drag data towards me just a little.
I won't participate in loyalty card schemes because I don't like the data density they're building up and don't think many shoppers appreciate quite how much data is being stored on exactly what they do and what can be done with it. Polls are rather different though - it's upgront about what's being gathered and due to the different nature of the data, has rather less nefarious possibilities for data mining. Net result I'm absolutely fine with giving them data to help swing towards me. After all, if I've got the chance to help steer the world towards what I want and I _can_ take it, why shouldn't I?
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Most are skewed by design anyway, so what's the problem?
All polls have done for us is replace a republic with a flaky democracy by proxy where decisions are made by strategests based on the latest data and not by representatives.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
apply to telemarkers? I thought that they were not allowed to call cells either.
A survey held at my university on the day after student government elections showed that 30% of those surveyed had voted. The actual turnout was only 10%. Without the slightest embarassment, the poll takers reported a "margin of error" of 2% on their numbers.
There are three very different types of people in the world: 1) those that lie on surveys, 2) those that avoid surveys, and 3) those that actually participate and tell the truth on surveys. I would suggest that the errors and biases introduced by groups 1 & 2 make the data from group 3 all but meaningless.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
There are tables that list the sampling error for a given sample size. Larger samples reduce the error. A polling organization has to balance the sample size against the cost of conducting the poll.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A recent study indicates that 80% of pollsters just make up numbers, anyway.
I wonder what effect the cell number portability will have on pollsters, though - if my landline prefix was 489, and now I'm on a cell phone with the same prefix, how will they know it's a cell? List brokers may now need to run their lists against customer lists from wireless providers, to remove any duplicates. Which will drive up costs, especially if they had to match against the national dnc registry too. Perhaps list purchasing will become prohibitively expensive!
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
What about those who have a land line, but don't use it to make phone calls? I would have dumped the landline when I moved since I always use my cell phone, except I need it for DSL (no cable modem available in my area), the security system, and digital cable (uses phone line to download TV schedule). An active, busy phone line but no phone plugged in!
Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway. If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone.
Um, no. 18-24 year olds are also less likely to vote than say 50-70 year olds who have regular land line telephones.
For political polls, this might result in more accurate polling.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This wouldn't be a problem if US mobile phone companies weren't so braindead in their charging plans, forcing people to pay for incoming calls. The US is essentially the only country in the world that does this, and it really doesn't make sense. Everywhere else, only outgoing calls cost money, and mobile phone companies are still very profitable.
*sigh* How is it that, with all their money, the US is stuck with a mobile phone system inferior to that of most third world countries? I live in Tanzania, and our mobile phone system is superior to the US' in reception, coverage, audio quality, interoperability, price, and convenience.
I believe that you to firmly hold to the old adage that "If you are not young and liberal you are most likely wierd; if you are not old and conservative you're most likely dead."
Take this with full strip of salted pork, because I know very intelligent (and technically adapt) young people that are staunchly conservative believing Bill O'Rielly is the best newsman since Walter Concite. (And thats the way it is.) On the other hand I have many other intelligent friends who I consider flaming (used in the kindest most loving way dear) liberals who have the firm belief that the cell phone is the invention to the devil. (However many don't believe in god so when asked how the devil, who they should also not believes exists, invented the cell phone they usually start throwing soy based products at me).
The real truth behind the use of technology in every day life is most likely related to those who find the greatest convience in the tool. The slant of the polls is likely to exclude:
-Single people living alone generally 18-32 however with growing popularity in the 40-60 catagory.
-Duel Employed Married without childeren and using two seperate cell phones along with work phone
-Those living in Anderson Tents in Northern MN and have forsaken technology entirely for a "simple" existance without landline or cell phone.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
As my first salaried job I worked for a social and market research firm in the late 80's. Back then, telephone was a reliable form of data collection.
Unfortunately, the growth of telemarketing lowered everyone's annoyance threshold and it is now very difficult (and costly) to obtain the adequate response rate necessary for quality data.
The firm I worked for has since moved on to purely mail based survey work.
..because they're unable to survey cellular only users to find out their demographic information.
Before automation, weren't most polls conducted via mail (or in person)? Can't survey by phone is not the same as can't survey at all.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Ok, I'm doing the polls. Yes, I am some of those who kindly ask you to do that survey. Flame me now. All I can say to defend myself is that I don't do telemarketing at all and never will. Sometimes I ask myself on why so many people who refuse to do the survey stil agree with me that they watch survey results on TV. (e.g. which party would you vote for, what's your opinion about Iraq, where to you think healthcare should be going). I agree, in some situations we simply happen to call at the wrong time. I hang up myself as soon as I can in these cases. But mosttimes people are donwright unwilling or downright lying. In a more and more confusing world, surveys are a way of roughly knowing what others think, and, sure, to use it for your interests. The problem described is non existend here in Germany, I'm confused to hear you got to pay when you pick up your mobile. You only got to do that here if you are outside of Germany. Therefore this simply is a question on wether the institute is willing to pay the higher costs per call. Additionally, our computer also dials numbers not listed in the telephone book, to get better results (The numbers are autogenerated by a software), I don't know on wether this happens in the US. Also, at least over here, 18-24 is not the problematic group, even though it's not hte easiest either. I think easiest is somewhere round 30, than 18-24 and than, 60+. Male 60+ is espacially a desaster, try to get them to do the survey some time late afternoon. This is a job, earning me money to invest in my studies. I do not feel bad doing it, and I think it makes this world a bit more transparent and easy to understand. George
:-)
Pollsters are much imitated by marketers, I don't mind the former, I loathe the later (they want MY information, not an aggregate of information derived in part from me), so I avoid both.
This is not a problem needing a solution. Dewey defeats Truman isn't a problem. I'd rather NOT have polls, they skew results...leessee...according to this poll, by....
Who cares?
I'm one of the many that have decided to use a cell phone only and I could care less about this.
since we purported to be a "democracy", unfortunately. an election is just a poll with a really bad sample.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
This is going to sound like troll BS, but I am enrolled in a bunch of survey and poll organizations and conservatively, I make an additional $300 bucks a year. How? By watching new movie trailers and drinking soda and coffee. Hell, I just made $35 eating salsa about 2 weeks ago. The day before Christmas I made $25 watching a television commercial for Bank of America and thier new keychain credit card thingy.
Sure sure, all you IT types make 5 million a year and its beneath you, but hell, I enjoy it. It's fun trying new products and watching new stuff. At least then I can tell Hollywood that the upcoming action flick (most recently $15 for watching the trailer for Torque) looks like a steaming pile of crap.
For political polls, this might result in more accurate polling.
False. Accuracy is based on how close the prediction is to reality, repeatedly and repeatably. A smart bomb's guidance system is may be very inaccuracte even if it hits the target dead center every now and then. If the polling method gets lucky in one instance, but fails miserably other times, it's not accurate, it's lucky.
If a political issue is ever allowed to come up that young people are very interested in, things could get out of hand very quickly. (As the politicians learned in the 1960's).
My unsupported suspicion is that there is a close correlation between what the media and the politicians are presenting as the issues, and what the pollsters are able to poll about. This is a sort of self-designed, self-fulfilling prophecy: Those demographics that can't be measured by polls and controlled by mass-media hyper-hype blasting are disenfranchised because they are dangerously unpredictable wildcards. Things important to those demographics are ignored by the media and politicians, because the politicians/media can't control it.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
The solution is for the surveying companies to hire some local temps and then have these people canvass the local schools and malls. Ask no more than ten questions and offer those being surveyed coupons for local businesses if they participate. In addition to a coupon for participation, give them a pre-paid postcard to fill out so you can get a snail mail address (and email addy if they are inclined to give it out).
Frankly, you might as well ignore Mexicans when they bring up worthless items like this- they're still trying to take back the land they lost in the war.
Troll.
But mostly valid... Yeah call us USians or some other (sounds rather insulting when you say it in the United States slang we call english) term.
"Amercians" is short for "United States of America-ians" It's a logical extraction of a mouthful that dosen't make the speaker sound like an idiot.
USians however...
US - The group of people I am part of.
(It is also used to mean "The only people that matter")
Used as a "nation" USians could litterally mean "The people of the only nation that matters". Pritty high handed even for the U.S.A. (note the piriods)
It's no wonder the rest of the world hates the United States. Outside of our really stupid diplomatic policy people refer to the citizens of the United States by a phrase that in english is a global insult.
We don't say Yusah we say You Ehss Aey. Three letters for three words.
Outside that USians, USlanders, USers, USAers and any other combonation starting with the letters US in an effort to make a word out of the initals turns into a mouthful.
Anyway people seldomly refer to themselfs based on the contenent or landmass they come from but from the nation they are part of.
Go ahead and call the citzens of the United States of American USAlanders if you like...
Hay try it in a French bar I wonder how long it'll take before they pick up the insult and slam a bottle of wine over your head (a cheap California brew not a fine French wine.. never waist the good stuff)
I don't actually exist.
If the polling companies would go out of business, I would be the first to throw a party. I'm so sick of the news media, be it Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Drudge using polls as "news". If they would get off their butts and actually go out into the world and find out for themselves what's going on, instead of using a poll, we'd be better off.
How is a "sampling" of 1000 people, in a nation soon approaching 300 million a good "snapshot" of America? It isn't! Plus, they can skew the question something like this: If you had a choice between raising taxes, or going without gas for your car, which would you be in favor of? Then, on the nightly news, they report that a majority of Americans are in favor of taxes. Yeah, no kidding, with a question like that, who wouldn't want to raise taxes? But, like the idiots that still rely on the network news as their ONLY source of information, they will believe what they see, and not THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
Exclusion of a particular socioeconomic, political, racial, geographic or other group can skew poll results, because a reliable poll must draw responses at random from as wide a field as possible.
;) - is that this group tends to include more of the higher intelligent and more productive members of society. Why? Because they have the self-awareness and assertiveness to spend their time the way they want to, and not how marketers / survey takers want people to spend their time.
"If enough people have no chance of being included, survey results will be invalid," said the National Council on Public Polls
Their polls are already skewed, and always have been. The polls ignore the demographic group that:
A> Lets the machine answer the phone OR
B> Hangs up immediately on ALL automated calls OR
C> Hangs up immediately when they realize it's a survey / sales pitch.
The existence of this group of people is completely ignored by pollsters - they don't even acknowledge such a group may exist or may have different responses than the people who are more generous or wasteful with their time.
Surveys and telemarketers use a tone of voice and method of speech that immediately says to me "huckster - hang up and don't waste time". I know of a lot of other people who react the same way to sales pitches. My suspicion - purely unbiased, I assure you
Of course, this would explain an awful lot about American society - everything from politics to the trash on TV. (Or was that redundant?)
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Since both cell-only people and Slashdot readers tend to be tech-savy early adopters, I think we can augment the Gallop polls with Slashdot polls to make up for the lost demographic. Of course, this could lead to a "Cowboy Neal beats Bush" headline ...
Wah! Wah! Wah!
I got rid of my land-line phone for EXACTLY this reason.
I got fed up with telemarketer/researcher/charity calls.
I got sick and tired of these assholes thinking they had the RIGHT to bother me.
Boo hoo.
Come on, we all know these polls are skewed already. Even if the polls themselves used well-asked questions and an accurate cross-section of the population, the reporting on them is usually very biased. It's funny how "40%" becomes "nearly half of all Americans" when it supports the writer's opinion.
I would also imagine that much of their calling is conducted during the day. This would seem to exclude people who work during the day, so they might well be missing the employed demographic
Also, I would imagine that there are a number of people who screen their calls via answering machine and also would thus not answer the phone
I have blog like everyone else
I have a brother-in-law who sells vacuum cleaners. He told me that his company sets up sales appointments for him. I asked him how his company finds these people, and he responded that the company starts out with a "survey" call. If "they qualify," then they will get a second phone call asking if they would like a visit from a company representative to tell them more about these vacuum cleaners.
This company argues that those who participated in the initial survey have a "prior business relationship" with the company, and so even if they are on the National Do-not-call Registry, the company can still make a soliciting call to them. The survey is just a front to get around FCC regulations. Hence, I personally will never respond to a survey call, because I cannot trust the intent of the survey-takers.
On that note, I got a call on behalf of my local state trooper organization a couple of weeks ago. After some small talk, the guy on the phone asked, "We offer a $45, a $50, and a $60 contribution amount to the state trooper fund. Which of these amount would work best for you?" Well, first of all, I *hate* coercive questions. I told him, "I don't know; I'll have to think about it." He responded along the lines of, "Well, we do have a minimum contribution option of $15. Why don't I send you a letter about this, and you don't have to commit to anything at the moment." Okay, whatever. So I got a letter in the mail thanking me for committing to giving them money, and I noticed (in small print) a mention of thanks for this telemarketing company for helping the state troopers raise these funds.
That did it for me. Under no uncertain circumstances will I ever deliberately justify a telemarketing firm's existence. Part of my contribution would go to help support the telemarketers. I shredded that letter on the spot, and when that marketing firm calls again, I'm going to tell them in a very unpleasant way exactly why they never heard back from me (hint: it will probably emphasize exactly what I think about telemarketing types).
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
the only thing polls accomplish these days is make the person with the most money hire the best number crunchers to make the data say what ever they want. As more and more people move to wireless only, it's becomes more obvious how biased and inaccurate polls are to begin with.
Please consider that Slashdot is, by definition, a US centered web site before posting next time.
Thank you.
Sean
It took a while for me to get used to the "caller pays" scheme that we use for cell phones in this country, because I came from the American "Phone Owner Pays" system, but it allows much more freedom in passing out your cell number, which I never did in the U.S., and would eliminate one of these legal hurdles the pollsters face.
Goy (my gf) is reminding me that it's much easier to get girls' phone numbers, as well, because they don't have to pay.
Put identity in the browser.
As revenue drops these companies will resort to whatever means they can to skirt the rules and stay in business. How long will it take before companies figure out which cell customers get unlimited nights and weekends and start calling during those times? It seems like that's a nice little loophole to get around the "can't call if the customer has to pay for it" rule.
Technology advances, and things that depend on that technology either need to advance or will be lost.
Having just completed the Christmas season (or "holidays"), I'm sure a lot of people (at least Americans) are used to seeing the Salvation Army people ringing for change and small bills. With society moving more and more to a cashless society, they can expect to see falling donations from this practice.
There's no reasons pollsters shouldn't expect the same since they can't call cell phones.
This is not flamebait; its poorly worded, but its pretty much dead on.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What kind of democracy do you want? The kind where a non-representative skewed-random sample of people are given the power of declaring what the people think? Disregard all media polls! The only polls that matter are the ones where you put your ballot in the box.
Start Running Better Polls
The fact that no marketers can call you is a good reason to go cell only. You don't even have to be on the FCC telemarketer list in the US, who knows if that list works. Just get a cell phone number and drop the landline.
Also one of the reasons only 18-24 year olds go cell only. I am 30 and go cell only. Is that the older generation had there phone numbers for guite awhile and don't want to get rid of it or there are several people in a house/apartment that want to use the phone.
Make me your friend. All my friends get +1 modifier and I need friends :)
Christ, not this tired rant again...
The less polling the better. Maybe companies and politicians might actually have to try to communicate with people to find out what they are thinking.
Plus, they don't into the account the group of folks, like me, who will give a pollster incorrect answers just to show my disdain for the polling process.
If you look over most Gallup polls, the average poll sample is usually 600-1200 people. That's less than 1/100th of 1% of the United States population.
How could it possibly be accurate? Short answer: It isn't remotely accurate. Gallup had Bush winning the 2000 election by as much as 7-10 percentage points. He lost the popular vote by 1-2%. That's a 8-11% inaccuracy, roughly. Not to spark debate by using this particular election for an example, but just referring to one most people would remember. Polls come out on a wide variety of subjects daily...some of which are commissioned by specific groups. You want a poll that says more people use Linux? Just buy it. You want one that says more people prefer death to ice cream? Buy it. If you can find 160,000 people who would buy Justin Gaurini's CD, you can be damn sure you can find a couple hundred who will say pretty much anything.
Then, release the poll to try and start some viral marketing. "More people love Linux? I gotta get in on this!"
Of course, if you read Gallup's disclaimers, they pretty musch say two things:
1. These polls are not really accurate.
2. Any poll can be skewed.
But, Gallup never explains what steps they take to prevent skewing, only that they are aware skewing can occur. Well, duh!
For all I know, the parent is true...
True story.
The trouble is, it seems like many of the polls I'm hit with don't really account for someone as weird as me.
For example, a couple months ago I got a call from someone doing a poll on consumer electronics and home automation. Great, I thought, that's right up my alley. Unfortunately, a lot of the questions were along the lines of, "Do you plan to purchase a computer capable of recording TV shows in the next six months?" The honest answer is, "Not unless one of the two I already own breaks." So I have to decide on the spot how I want to misrepresent myself: do I answer honestly and underrepresent my interest in such things, or lie and overrepresent my interest in purchasing such a thing? (I answered "no" to that one.)
Political polls aren't quite as bad in that regard, but they also usually fail to include reasonable options for someone with, say, a vehemently pro-personal-freedom point of view, so you're stuck with five or ten seconds to figure out which of the unsuitable multiple choices will skew the poll closest to what you'd like to see.
Now, obviously in most cases this is due to poor poll design, but in my experience most polls aren't all that well designed. So if I decide to switch off my landline at some point, I don't think I'll lose much sleep over pollsters' inability to get highly inaccurate poll results out of me.
In reality we need to prevent CBS, ABC, and NBC from calling any of the races before the polls closed like when they stated that Gore won Florida 1 hour before the polls closed.
It was and still is the most glaring example of media trying to influence an election result.
The polling orginizations generally need to qualify two things:
1. Survey registered voters
2. Survey likely voters - ones that have voted in recent past elections
3. Survey a wide sample of voters - not just ones in NYC, NJ, Boston, LA.
4. Report the actual questions and answeres posed since many polls have a 'push down' question as the first one to influence the second question's answer.
Question 1: Do you approve or disapprove of Vice President Dick Cheney's being Haliburton's past president and Haliburton's oil related work in Iraq?
Question 2: Do you think Bush is doing a god or bad job in Iraq?
Lastly, polls must not be reported as news stories since a poll is not news and is only reported as such to influence readers (just like an editorial - should it be on the editorial page?).
From http://www.donotcall.gov/ FAQ
Q: What about telephone surveys?
A: If the call is really for the sole purpose of conducting a survey, it is not covered. Only telemarketing calls are covered - that is, calls that solicit sales of goods or services. Callers purporting to take a survey, but also offering to sell goods or services, must comply with the National Do Not Call Registry.
Internet polls don't produce representative samples because they are not limited to just one country or region and the sampling is not even close to random. You can only use random samples to make inferences about the population.
True story.
Actually, professionals can show that the larger the percentage of people not wanting to answer, the more favorable of a result they can often claim (even if there is no statistical basis for it). And before you ask, I mean professional writers and such as opposed to professional statisticians.
True story.
I would think that the increased use of caller ID would already be making phone polls almost worthless. Who answers their phone anymore if they don't know the caller? There is a certain population that just doesn't want to participate in surveys any more and there is another group that won't be bothered with phone calls. So who is answering these survey phone calls? That's a piece of data I would like to see.
Of course, the news media outlets (radio, television, newspaper, and web) like the polls because they make for quick headlines and short articles. Thus, the polls results become a force driving opinion disproportionately.
Of course, I'm not a statistician, so I'm probably just blowing smoke out of my ass.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
DO u believe that they have more than 5% margin of error? may be the president should be elected the same way too - will save money for the country.
polls are nothing but distorting reality to look your way. I dont believe in any polls over phone other than those made for tv shows.
rest of it is just propaganda.. someone's unilateral wet dream.
as they currently stand have any real validty. LOL
As long as they can restrict their calls to a particular area code its not of any use anyways, and almost all of them are very minimal people likely to reflect the opinions of the surveyor.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yeah, they didn't lose much, just their remaining credibility. It sounds like they would have been just as accurate flipping a coin (no doubt this would have been more efficient).
True story.
Perhaps people willing to respond to the survey were more likely to have voted. I see nothing necessarily inconsistent about 30% of SURVEY RESPONDENTS having voted, but only 10% of the student body as a whole (which would include everyone who didn't respond to the survey.)
Yes, voters may have been more willing to answer the survey. Or non-voters may have lied about voting (out of embarassment or a desire to please the pollster). The point is that the survey results were necessarily inconsistent with the true results for the general population (30% voter turnout vs. 10%). Whether the sample is biased (by nonparticipation in the poll) or the answers were biased (by lying to the poll taker) is irrelevant -- the poll contains obvious inconsistencies.
A poll is only valuable to the extent that it is consistent with and representative of the general population. This example illustrates how wrong the results can be despite clever calculations of the statistical margin of error.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
> I know I don't bother picking up if there's no caller
Not only do I not bother to answer if they block callerID, if they DO leave a message, I delete it without bothering to listen.
I figure if a caller is so rude as to attempt to deny me the choice as to wether or not he deserves my time, then he probably doesn't deserve a second my time in the first place. Or if said caller is so convinced that I wouldn't want to talk to him, and he has to be decietful and hit *67, then he's probably right, and I DON'T want to talk to the little sneak.
It works great too... Even on the landline, I hardly ever have to hear a telemarketer's pitch (even though they're so rude as to call YOU, they don't want you to be able to call THEM, so they almost always block callerID). And it's absolutely WONDERFUL for not having to talk to that creepy, annoying, 'ex who wouldn't leave me alone for the longest time.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
The one recieving pays nothing, simple aye. If I ring someone from my phone, mobile or traditional, I pay, but if someone rings dials up either my landline or my mobile, they pay.
What is it the way those bloody Yanks have to complicate things that can be done so simply elseware - look at their bloody voting machine mess, when most of the planet copes fine with just 'tick the box' paper ballots.
Just look at different poll ratings of the current president...they can differ by as much as 10% while asking the same question. see Bush job ratings
The only real use for these telephone polls is to spot trends, not to get hard data points. Telephone polling is able to spot trends in the population of people who own and answer landline phones. I think this is a subset that covers all kinds of demographics and can therefore spot general trends.
I can recieve calls on my mobile while on holidays on the otherside of the continent & it still costs nothing (well nothing above the monthly charge)
And one of the big reasons is that marketeers can't call me. When I don't see a number I know, I usually send to voice mail. Granted the other reason why I am cell only is that I am never in one place long enough. I traditionally work from the local coffee house mainly that has $2 all you can drink coffee and free Wifi HSI. I typically spend from 8am till 1PM in the office, then I am gone for the afternoon either meeting with clients, to the library to read up on this week in technology or down to the coffee shop to write up reports and such.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
First, the very first thing you learn in any statistics class is that you cannot get correct statistical data if the subjects know they are being polled. There are a number of reasons, such as believing they'd do something different than they really would, embarassement about answering a certain way, etc.
Second, most poll questions are so horribly written that you can't provide a valid answer anyway.
For the past 3 years, my wife and I had a WebTV that a polling company gave us for the purpose of taking electronic polls. The first thing my wife did was lie about her personal data, claiming she was a 100 year old woman, and various other bits of nonsense. Once we got to actually taking the polls, they were either filled with marketing questions ("if this airline were a person, what type of person would it be? a)outdoorsy, b)intellectual, c)sportsman"), or had multiple choice questions where your answer was not one of the choices. Often times it was unclear what the possible answers meant. (Does "you can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor" mean a) if you do put too much in, something bad will happen, or b) no matter how much you put in, it's never "too much"?)
So I've come to the conclusion that between self-selecting poll takers, who are prone to give bad information (often unintentionally), and terribly written poll questions, where you can't provide the correct answer, that all statistics from polls are 100% incorrect.
Well, instead of hanging up next time, be polite. When they ask you what operating system you use, tell them it's windows 98. Browser- what's that? Oh, right, "Explorer". Search engine? I don't know what that is. And tell them you've got a girl-friend.
Freaking troller. It's not Seth Finkelstein. Mod down the freller.
18 months ago I moved from WA to PA and now am moving to TX. At that time, I got high speed cable and had no need for wireline telephony. We have two cell phones (me and my wife) and a plan that is optimized for us calling each other and our long distance friends. This saved us at least $100 in phone costs and increased our convenience even more.
As for demographics, we are not in the 18-24 demo, nor are the great number of my coworkers and friends who are doing the same thing. It doesn't take genius to realize the most effective don't call list is the cellular NPA-NXX listing!
"This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money."
I'm personally not sure that restriction goes far enough. "Hi, we're taking a survey to see if you've tried any of our fine products!"
"Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway."
Here's an interesting thing: Why are you so concerned about polling 18-24 year olds? Other than a vocal minority, most of them can't be bothered to care about current events, let alone vote. The only big reason to want to get to these people is... shall we say "marketing demographics?"
"If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
And for whom is that a problem, exactly? The election still happened and the guy who got the majority of electoral votes still became president, right? Other than the media and the political parties, who really needs this polling information?
I realize this may be ancient history for some, but with the debacle of the 2000 election still fresh in some memories, the media went through the 2002 election with next to no information from exit polls. Did democracy break down somehow because of it?
good for me though.
I won't use a cell phone.
(I'd give reasons but do you really care?)
Absolutely correct. I don't live in the United States. I live in Oklahoma. The United States comprises about a block of the downtown of major cities, a couple of Army bases scattered around near small towns, the country formerly known as Iraq, and ten miles square in Virginia.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
has way more impact than cell phones. How many 24-50 year olds have CID service, and use it to screen calls? I'll bet that number is WAY bigger than the "cell-only" crowd. And, I'd point out that the group is likely characterized as better-educated, higher-paid, and more-likely to be conservative than the average voter. Therefore, poll results get skewed to the left. But, I'd imagine that most news organization/poll takers enjoy that bias. That's why there's no interest in improving the accuracy of the polls.
I'd be insulted to be called a Yankee.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Tell that to all the pollsters calling my cell.
I voted in the Iowa caucus 4 years ago, and plan to do so again this year. I've been called probably... 5 or 6 times so far to be polled. I haven't been called by automatic polls, although several of the democratic candidates have sent automatic messages to my cell. Very annoying.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm sorry. You're going to have to explain that joke(?). It's non-obvious to a non-American.
Brits call us "yanks" all the time. For what its worth, and Mexicans call us "Estunadounidoenese" or "united statesian"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
our (USA-ians) constitution provides for quite a bit of sovereignty for each state. we (the states) actually behave a lot more like the EU (lots of countries sharing a few rules) than a true single nation. more of a federation than a nation. its a socio-political joke that i dont think even most USA-ians would get.
The system used by pollsters, is to call randomly until a category is filled in i.e if you need 50 ppl of the age between 18-24, you'll call and call till the quota is full. Therefore while statistically, it may be true that some parts of a given population has no landline telephone access, all a polster has to do is to find a dozen or so of their peers among hundred thousands or even millions of housholds to cover that segment. Lately, I was involved in local elections in my country, and to my opinion, the more worriyng factor is how people are tired of having unsolicited calls and simply answer falsely to pollsters, cut the call in the midst or doing anything else that may mislead the survey the best they can. While I can understand ppl that hate telemarketing, polling has a very important role in public and commercial life. Almost everybody likes to read polls but is reluctent to take part in it.. I would like to see a list of ppl that do want to take part in polls for pollsters to chose from, same as a "Don't call us" list. If the "wiiling to participate" list will be comprehensive and diverse enough, it may save a lot of trouble for everyone..
It wasn't really a joke. It's all technically true.
a block of the downtown of major cities: post office, tax collector, federal courts
a couple of Army bases scattered around near small towns: well, probably more than a couple...
the country formerly known as Iraq: technically under US control
and ten miles square in Virginia: Washington DC
The US doesn't get anything unless it's ceeded to them by the states or they capture it in war. And, actually, I forgot a few: federal prisons, Guam, embassies, the Virgin Islands, and national parks.
Um... ever hear of slavery?
I know that's not why the war was fought but seriously.
He's saying that the United States is really just the government-owned property, including military bases, the federal buildings in major cities, and the District of Columbia (AKA Washington, D.C.), which isn't technically part of any state - it's its own "thing" that's part of the federal government. Iraq is lumped in there 'cause the feds give the impression that they're running Iraq now. :)
The individual states, as the other poster mentioned, are supporting members of the USA government, but are mostly independent as much as possible.
If you or anyone in the household has any medical condition, or there are children in the household, the government will pay for basic landline service if you cannot afford it. I know this is true for Pennsylvania, but believe it is nation-wide.
---
I stopped my landline service a few years ago. I have used the cell phone to call 911 several times.
The worst was for a car running head-on into the end of a cement median at over 50mph. I called it in within seconds of it happening. There was tons of paper flying around on the highway, and many cars were swerving. I tried to slow and my car slid for a second, so I headed for the exit ramp at Valley Forge. I happened to look left and saw the car hit and the front-end crumple. The medians were not lined up properly due to the construction on Route 202, and there were no orange bumpers in the area. I had the cell phone dialed before I reached the end of the ramp. 911 said they already knew about the accident that happened 5 minutes ago, but I was able to convince them that this was a new report since it had happened not more than 20 seconds before they answered. I would have had to go through at least 2 traffic lights to reach a landline. If I had waited to find a landline, they would not have believed this was a new report.
If you can afford it, then a cell phone is better for more emergencies than a landline, but the landline is free for the needy.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.