tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post17667510043576446..comments2024-03-28T14:16:10.498+11:00Comments on Dr Kevin Bonham: A Field Guide To Australian Opinion PollstersKevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-79086917195633521712014-01-24T18:11:39.541+11:002014-01-24T18:11:39.541+11:00Ta. There are not a lot available at the moment (...Ta. There are not a lot available at the moment (only mine, BludgerTrack, AFR's and Insiders Poll of Polls) but that's the second time I've had that suggestion and I'll add those to the section discussing aggregates and then edit more in as they inevitably emerge towards the next election. Kevin Bonhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-53657910690566083332014-01-24T18:00:46.189+11:002014-01-24T18:00:46.189+11:00A review of the available "aggregate polling&...A review of the available "aggregate polling" outlets would be a useful addition to the article.Spinicityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04232429097693904674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-45395405784347574122013-08-16T17:14:52.661+10:002013-08-16T17:14:52.661+10:00Vote Compass is a giant opt-in and not a poll as s...Vote Compass is a giant opt-in and not a poll as such, but I have seen that it is using demographic scaling to attempt to "normalise" its output on issues questions and produce a poll-like output. This seems from what I've seen so far to be working reasonably well - the detailed results I've seen generally make sense and are quite interesting. But there will always be some skewing that cannot be eliminated because the survey only gets the results of people who like using computers to answer surveys. For instance, results on IT questions could well be unrepresentative.<br /><br />I have some issues with its two-dimensional voter orientation assessment. Firstly the usual way of doing these things is on a two-way axis of economic liberty vs social liberty. Vote Compass uses an axis called "social liberalism" that seems to be conceptually confused. For instance on every personal liberty question I took the most libertarian position possible but I was still classified as much less "socially liberal" than the Greens. It seems that the axis includes views about, for instance, asylum seeker policy under the heading "liberalism", in an attempt to squash all non-economic issues into one axis. <br /><br />I also think it evaluates results compared to the Greens too much based on the issues they are making the most noise about at this election rather than longstanding issues that define the party and are likely to resurface outside the campaign. Especially, classic environment vs conservation conflicts, which aren't front and centre in this campaign, don't really feature in the questions list. <br /><br />So I have a few reservations about it but it is producing some useful general results.Kevin Bonhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-25859600952180786242013-08-16T15:58:51.948+10:002013-08-16T15:58:51.948+10:00Interesting stuff! What is your opinion of the ABC...Interesting stuff! What is your opinion of the ABC's Vote Compass survey?orphia_nayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01935021246612203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-19075866848682371952013-08-14T23:52:44.052+10:002013-08-14T23:52:44.052+10:00ISO standards - Nielsen at least is listed as accr...ISO standards - Nielsen at least is listed as accredited here: http://www.amsro.com.au/AMSRO_wp_amsro236/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/List-of-ISO-20252-Companies-20135.pdf (I also found evidence of accreditation for Essential, Morgan and amr). It's not an issue that concerns me greatly because if a given pollster is not "up to much" then that should be revealed over time by persistently inaccurate or suspicious results. <br /><br />MOE - I think the article covers the problems with supplied MOEs pretty well. MOE figures supplied by pollsters often are misleading because of house effect (meaning that the distribution is centred about a figure other than the true mean) or scaling (meaning that the sample size is not effectively what it is described as, because some respondents count for more than others). Sampling being a form of pseudo-randomness that then has to be beaten back to something more closely resembling the real thing introduces other problems and it could be that the MOE for any particular pollster can only be measured from experience, and not perfectly modelled. Nonetheless, for polls that don't have huge house effects, MOE turns out to be a useful practical approximation and is helpful in encouraging people to be aware of the influence of random sample error on results. Essential's methods page includes a fairly frank discussion of the issues and the fact that MOE is an in-theory figure.<br />Kevin Bonhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-17530256630718409642013-08-14T21:02:07.418+10:002013-08-14T21:02:07.418+10:00Kevin,
When I last checked in mid 2010, there wa...Kevin,<br /><br /><br />When I last checked in mid 2010, there was a new international standard for market, social and opinion research, viz: .AS ISO 20252. I noted that Newspoll had this accreditation, but, as far as I could see, Galaxy and Nielsen didn’t. These last 2 made no reference to accreditation on their websites. That told me they weren't up to much. Maybe they have since become accredited. <br /><br />I think that the Margin of Error (MOE), nowadays quoted when poll results are released, would be believable if the survey sample was random. However the inevitable large number of non-respondents and the sampling methods (eg. landlines) make the MOE unmeasurable. So these polls can give only us a rough estimate of a prevalence, and shouldn't be complemented with dodgy MOE's. <br /><br />I can't see the worth of spending much time studying and comparing the results of opinion polls. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Leigh Callinan<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01145678161156695190noreply@blogger.com