{"id":65543,"date":"2024-01-28T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=65543"},"modified":"2024-01-27T11:03:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T16:03:10","slug":"qotd-never-depend-on-surveys-for-real-world-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/01\/28\/qotd-never-depend-on-surveys-for-real-world-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Never depend on “surveys” for real-world issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There’s a reason “social science” is all horseshit, and that reason is: surveys. All of this stuff is based on surveys, and as it happens, I have quite a bit of experience of being on the receiving end of these. You see, back in grad school I was involved with a young lady in the Soash Department \u2014 I know, I know, but a man has certain needs, ya feel me? \u2014 and so I was always on call to take whatever goofy little tests they dreamed up, as a favor to her and her equally spastic hardcore Lefty friends. Anecdotes aren’t data, of course, but I’ve got a lot of anecdotes, and I can tell you \u2014 anecdotally \u2014 that there are two huge, self-reinforcing problems with these surveys: a) respondent pool, and b) design.<\/p>\n

The respondent pool is, overwhelmingly, college kids taking them for class credit. Knowing what we know about Basic College Girls, who again are the majority of all<\/em> college kids, is it any surprise that the results just happen to confirm the conclusions the slightly older, but no less Basic, Grad Student Girls were looking for? Throw in the design problem \u2014 questions about as subtle as “Do you think all races should be treated equally, or are you a monster?” \u2014 and you’ve got scientific proof that Liberals are good people and Conservatives suck.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Is vs. Ought II: Moral Foundations Theory”, Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2021-04-20.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a reason “social science” is all horseshit, and that reason is: surveys. All of this stuff is based on surveys, and as it happens, I have quite a bit of experience of being on the receiving end of these. You see, back in grad school I was involved with a young lady in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,53,41,13],"tags":[431,424,289,1020,1462,42,290,764],"class_list":["post-65543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-conservatism","tag-morality","tag-polls","tag-progressives","tag-severian","tag-sociology","tag-statistics","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-h39","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65543"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86972,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65543\/revisions\/86972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}