Re: Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.


"mazorj" <mazorj@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" <remick@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Mike Marotta" <mercury@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Feb 9, 3:29 pm, "Bruce Remick" <rem...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Makes one wonder about the level of education reached among the people
polled, and how many had to be told who Darwin was before responding to
the question.

Bruce, that was why I went to the HARRIS POLL website. Harris,
Gallup, Pew and a couple of others are well-known for their
statistical reliability. The "level of education" can be expected to
be statistically representative of the USA. They would be
representative for age, income, gender, race, etc. etc., all the
significant variables. That's what makes Harris, Gallup, etc., worth
paying for.

If you read the print edition of USA Today, you will see that their
polls often give the sample size, margin of error and confidence
level. If I recall my stats class, you need to have 1054 samples to
be 95% confident with +/- 3% error.

I was pleasantly surprised to see all the hits when I googled
"statistics help."

Depending on where you live, you can probably take an accredited
statistics class at a community college for $350-$500. It will take
13-15 weeks of commitment, but you will know way more than everyone
else about how polling is done and the mental exercise will help stave
off senility.

I still would be interested in learning if Harris only counted a response
from individuals who already were familiar with Darwin and his work.

Right away you run into trouble. Plenty of creationists and ID advocates
think they know their Darwin. You'd have to ask a battery of questions
about Darwin and evolution before you could get any idea of the accuracy
of the responses of "Yes, I am familiar".

For those who tested positive for knowing Darwin and evolution, can anyone
doubt that the percentage of those who accept evolution would be
significantly higher?

I also wonder how much religion might have played a factor, and from
there, demographics. Just the fact that someone would comission such a
poll suggests to me that the was a built in bias and that the originator
had an interest in seeing some interesting results.

The biases of whoever commisioned the survey for what reasons don't
matter. What matters is the survey design and in particular, whether the
questions are framed in neutral terms or are "push poll" questions
designed to steer responses in one direction. A reputable pollster will
try to keep the questions neutral (they are the experts there) and prevent
the client from putting his thumb on the scale. Even if the client is
trying to keep his questions neutral, a good polling outfit will point out
any problems and suggest better ways to frame the questions. Been there,
done that.

Always skeptical of polls and statistics.

As we all should be - but only for the right reasons. That's why you have
to read everything that is critical to a poll: Who commissioned it, how
the sampling population was defined and respondents were selected, how
they were contacted, the instructions given to the actual pollers, all the
actual survey questions and branching rules thereof, how "unable to reach"
and "refused to answer" cases were handled, how and why respondents and
their responses may have been stratified, plus the usual statistical
information like sample size, the claimed margin of error PLUS the
confidence level for that level of margin of error (you hardly ever see
that last one).

IMO you're reading too much into the motives for the poll. In fact,
sometimes polls like this are commissioned by churches and others who you
might think have a bias in favor of favorable religious views, but they
truly and only want accurate results. However, lacking the analysis that
I just described (and am not going to do), I can't dispositively refute
your concerns.

I guess they're not really "concerns". More like skeptical peeves which
seldom affect me personally. Like you pointed out, the only way to truly
judge the validity of any poll results is to have access to the actual
questions asked, a recording of the actual session, personal background
details of each pollee(?) along with what part of the country they lived in.
Totally impractical and unlikely. It just peeves me when any poll results
are announced and then are treated as foundations on which to build
additional projections. But I still get much more upset to find that I'm
out of beer.


..


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