The Role of Journalism

[Skjellyfetti]

What were the questions?

I've done polling...questions can be easily skewed to produce desired results.

The questions are in the link provided above.

And smelly...sampling is often inaccurate.

The error is controlled - hence results providing a "margin of error."


The poll used ~1,200 people. That's pretty typical for nationwide surveys. It provides a confidence interval of +-3% 19 times out of 20 (95%). (The average sample size of polls Nate Silver used in his 2012 election forecasts was 900).

Yes, you could sample a lot more people - 10,000 - and your margin of error would drop to just under 1% at 99% confidence. But, that's incredibly rare in this kind of polling. 95% confidence is the standard in science.

Again, if you have a better poll that uses something like 10,000 respondents, feel fee to post.

[YoUDeeMan]

"The margin of error for a sample of 1185 randomly selected respondents is +/- 3 percentage points.
The margin of error for subgroups is larger and varies by the size of that subgroup. Survey results are also
subject to non-sampling error. This kind of error, which cannot be measured, arises from a number of factors
including, but not limited to, non-response (eligible individuals refusing to be interviewed), question wording, the
order in which questions are asked, and variations among interviewers."



A factor, one of many more, also not noted: which networks were covering one of the issues more extensively that week.

Sorry, smelly...surveys such as this are not worth the time invested in them.

[CID1990]

See SK you stray away from graphs and this is what happens.

[GannonFan]

Sorry to bump this one back up, but the link kind of fit. While they were still sorting out the mess in Nepal with thousands dead, and while the rioting was getting worse an hour north in Baltimore and thousands of fans were told to stay in a baseball stadium for fear of their safety, all the major national news agencies were covering the Correspondent's Red Carpet and Dinner in Washington. Good stuff.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/atty ... -died.html

[YoUDeeMan]

Cecily Strong:

"Let's give it up for the Secret Service. I don't want to be too hard on those guys. You know, because they're the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot."

[AZGrizFan]

Provide something better if you don't like it.

Until then, quit whining. You asked - I provided.


Edit. And, the fact that you don't like the sample size tells me you either don't understand sampling.

It's not the size, it's what you do with it.

And their poll/logic/questions suck...providing a SHITTY response doesn't make your point any more valid, analjuice.