4.16.2008

Political Surveys, and All That Jazz.

So I received a strange e mail yesterday, asking me to post a political survey on my blog. I have no idea where or why I was contacted, other than the fact that I have a political based blog. Not that you could tell that from my recent posts, or lack thereof.

That not withstanding, I took that survey, and although in the e mail I was asked to disable comments and not discuss it for fear of biasing the study, I will say this much. I have a feeling the study is biased anyway. For those of us with fringe political affiliations, religious beliefs etc... there are few answers in every category that would actually satisfy our political assessments, or social sensibilities. I will also hint at what I think the purpose of the study is, and that is to see what possible bias exists with regards to Republicans vs. Democrats during the current primaries, seemingly slanted towards what or how people view the republican party. Not that one needs a study to figure it out, but hey.

That of course, is only my two cents. I will leave you to judge the survey for itself. There is a section at the end that asks for comments and suggestions, if you have any, I strongly suggest you take advantage of that opportunity. I know I sure did.

Without further ado, the link to the study can be found here and you can read the e mail below:

Hello,

I am a graduate student in Political Science at Stony Brook University.

I am working on a project researching online political discourse during
political campaigns. I have created a survey designed to examine who
visits political blogs and how blog readers think about the 2008
election and respond to online political discussions. Any results I
find will likely be presented at national and international political
science conferences and hopefully published in national political
science journals. In addition, I plan to use this data as part of my
dissertation.

All survey responses will be completely confidential, and all
identifying information will be stripped by the survey collection
software.

Previous versions of this survey have been posted on a few blogs, and
both liberal and conservative readers seemed to really enjoy taking it.
It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

I would appreciate it very much if you could post the link to this
survey on your blog and encourage your readers to participate. I am
very
happy to send you the results of the data I collect. I attach to this
email some of the *initial* results of a previous version of this
survey. Please do not share these results with your readers until a
few
days after you have posted the survey. If they see the prior results
before taking the survey, it could bias my current results.

Also, any suggestions you may have for me would be very welcome.
Bloggers are far ahead of political scientists in thinking about the
role of blogs in American politics.

If you choose to post it, please let me know, and please discourage
your
readers from discussing it (disabling the comments section would be
ideal, but if you can't do that, it's fine). Like I said above, it
could bias my results if people go into it with specific expectations.

Many thanks,
Lilliana Mason
Stony Brook University
Department of Political Science

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Stupid, inane and boring. You had to choose from three candidates (none of whom were Ron Paul) and the questions were just dumb. What relevance does my attitude towards feminism have? Ffs...

Simon Jester said...

Found a couple of abstracts written by the author of the study. She's definitely to the port side of the political spectrum. One of them was basically a conclusion that the more religious you are, the more intolerant. Duh! Always found it amusing that people get all wide-eyed and indignant at the very notion of the religious intolerant. Of course they're intolerant! If you accept the concept of a specific all-powerful Deity, and he (or she if you prefer) says everyone but the true believers are unclean, who are you as a believer to argue?

Waste of grant money.

Unknown said...

Wide-eyed, wet-nosed, yellow-trousered liberals. Gotta love 'em.

jmsjoin said...

Disable the comments! What the hell is that? Don't they want to hear the truth about this facade. I am going to check that out now. Adios!

jmsjoin said...

I reluctantly answered it though it was suspect until th BS abortion questions. I'd rather confront the guy head on and feel free to relay that!

Anon-Paranoid said...

Hi anok...

Sorry for not stopping in for awhile. Just to tied up with a lot on my plate lately.

I liked the Prank on the previous post and I got my own way of handling salesman and unwanted phone calls.

I just tell them that due to my opposition to the Nazi Regime running our county my calls my be monitored by the NSA and now they may be added to the NSA list for calling me.

I hope it scares the hell out of them.

As to polls I only do the Harris and I don't do any medical or financial ones. Its none of there business.

I also don't answer the financial ones of yearly income which is part of there overall demographic information in all there surveys.

Anyway I hope you get your painting done and its just the way you want it.

Take care and ...

God Bless.

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm just wicked but I never answer truthfully on these surveys.

I think what bothers me about them is that I no longer feel people present surveys in the hopes of finding objective information.

Far too often they seem to create surveys that are geared towards supporting conclusions they have already drawn.

This is why I reference deity's such as "Alfgar - she-wolf of the forest" and other such creations when describing my religious/spiritual/personal beliefs.

The way I see it, they already think I'm a mindless, inbred, country-bumpkin for my refusal to see "the government" as the solution to all of our problems (read: I'm an obstacle to "progress"), so I like to give them what they want.

By the way - check out my home theater blog. LMFAO! :)

Unknown said...

Kdawg -- agree totally. what a load of bollocks.