Here is something I posted to Facebook the other day:
The point I was trying to make — and that folks like David Redlawsk and the Rutgers Eagleton polling team and Patrick Murray at Monmouth University can make a lot better than I can — is that we need more precise language to distinguish between the open-ended surveys much of the media run and the kind of scientific polling done by Eagleton, Monmouth and others. Granted, the pot survey being conducted by NJ.com is technically a poll, but it is not scientifically constructed (to account for demographics, for instance) and, even if there are mechanisms in place to prevent the gaming of the survey, it only records voluntary responses. These are valuable tools for online news services, but the potential conflation in the reader/users’ mind requires us to be more precise.
Enter the Greensboro News & Record. The paper has announced that it is renaming its online polling as a “Question of the Day,” with this explanation (thanks to Jim Romenesko’s blog):
We’ve changed the name to be less misleading to readers who might assume our polls are scientific. Please keep that in mind when you’re touting them on social media.
Other news outlets really should follow suit.
Send me an e-mail.
Hank Kalet 