We’re publishing an original essay today by regular contributor Mike Hearn about the problem of ‘pro-social bias’ in online opinion polls. What this means is that the huge public support for the Covid restrictions revealed in opinion polls for YouGov and others is likely to be overstated. Here is an extract:
Online panel polling solves the problem of low phone response rates but introduces a new problem: the sort of people who answer surveys aren’t normal. People who answer an endless stream of surveys for tiny pocket-money sized rewards are especially not normal, and thus aren’t representative of the general public. All online panel surveys face this problem and thus pollsters compete on how well they adjust the resulting answers to match what the ‘real’ public would say. One reason elections and referendums are useful for polling agencies is they provide a form of ground truth against which their models can be calibrated. Those calibrations are then used to correct other types of survey response too.
A major source of problems is what’s known as ‘volunteering bias’, and the closely related ‘pro-social bias’. Not surprisingly, the sort of people who volunteer to answer polls are much more likely to say they volunteer for other things too than the average member of the general population. This effect is especially pronounced for anything that might be described as a ‘civic duty’. While these are classically considered positive traits, it’s easy to see how an unusually strong belief in civic duty and the value of community volunteering could lead to a strong dislike for people who do not volunteer to do their ‘civic duty’, e.g. by refusing to get vaccinated, disagreeing with community-oriented narratives, and so on.
In 2009 Abraham et al showed that Gallup poll questions about whether you volunteer in your local community had implausibly risen from 26% in 1977 to a whopping 46% in 1991. This rate varied drastically from the rates reported by the U.S. census agency: in 2002 the census reported that 28% of American adults volunteered.
Worth reading in full.
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I’ve just started answering these surveys, just to piss Zahawi off with answers he/ they/ it (?) don’t want. Try it, it’s quite cathartic!
Mr Yougov Zahawi must be very proud.
I have been filling in yougov surveys for a year, they’re bullshit the most ridiculous leading questions you can imagine, a recent one actually asked how scared are you of the new moronic variant? from 1 not very to 10 very scared, there was no option for not remotely scared at all, anyone who takes these things seriously as public opinion is a fool.
One of the biggest problems with YouGov I believe is that it records answers and if you don’t respond in a manner in which they want, you are then no longer (or less frequently) invited to respond to questions about that subject matter. I used to be invited to YouGov polls several times a week. I can’t remember the last time I was asked to respond to questions now ….. wonder why that is?!
I signed up to the YouGov three questions simply to try and balance out the bias. You can also absolutely see the way the government is trying to push an agenda. Or more realistically how much they can get away with. I recommend everyone sign up. They will still try and cook the books but anything that makes it more difficult is satisfying 😉
Govt driven polls contain highly loaded questions, for example in the climate/net-zero polling, there was essentially nothing on the reality of costs, just ‘feelings’. This is also just in from the petition to “Hold a referendum on whether to keep the 2050 net zero target“: “It is clear that public concern about climate change is high, having doubled since 2016, with 80% of people in the UK either concerned or very concerned (BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker Wave 37, 2021). We also know that people and businesses recognise that change must happen – 80% of respondents in a recent survey believe the way we live our lives will need to change to address climate change (BEIS, Climate change and net zero: public awareness and perceptions, 2021). In the same survey, after being provided with information on net zero, 78% of all participants said they strongly or somewhat supported the net zero target. “. Basically, a tissue of lies. There is no such support for net-zero, the ‘public climate workshops’ (or whatever they were called, were exceptionally biased towards net-zero and highly controlled, no free thought allowed, and the minute you ask whether people would be prepared to pay (through the nose)… Read more »
Great article Mike. Helps me understand why polls produce the odd results that they do
Houston Methodist doctor who is standing up for “right to try” and “off label” use of ivermectin. She has treated over 2,000 for covid, none hospitalized. Methodist hospital revoked her hospital privileges. Search youtube video id KVwm-KJvGzk and listen what she says. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Most people will only ‘volunteer’ if there’s something in it for them.I remember Mary Beard talking about her elderly, but totally compos mentis, mother. Every year, when the university entrance forms were being filled in, Mrs Beard was besieged by youngsters eager to ‘visit’ an old person. As soon as the forms had been sent in, these charitable visitors disappeared – for good.
My direct polling experience is limited to being told twice ‘I’m sorry sir, but we’ve already filled our quota for your age group on this survey. Have a nice day.’
It’s been obvious for a while now in Australia that either the citizens are lying to the pollsters or the pollsters are talking to the wrong people. Occasionally they demonstrate something like awareness. Back in 2013 the Gillard Labor government was falling apart. According to the opinion polls Gillard, aka Jooooolya, aka Ranga Monsterarse, was still more popular than Liberal leader Tony Abbott. But the newsreaders started to add a disclaimer that the poll results were ‘subject to a margin of error of plus or minus three percent’. The poll results were crap – we knew it, the pollsters and the media knew it, and they knew we knew it. The disclaimer was a laughable attempt at arse covering.
Most amusing. If they know what the ‘real’ public would say, why have a poll that then requires calibration to suit what is already known?
Sign up to the YouGov app and get into the habit of completing the daily poll of 3 current affairs questions every morning. They upload new ones about 1100 each day. It’s a little thing but it helps. Today all three questions are on masks.
YouGov constantly asks leading questions which would never be allowed in a court of law. What angers me is that the first question of any poll they run determines what camp you are in and they then tailor the poll accordingly. They have no shame in then stating, “The rest of the questions in this poll are only for those who don’t agree with [insert issue here]”. So presumably, they ask the same or similar set of questions to those that DO agree with said issue and then pick what results they want to publish. It’s criminal.
Can’t we still leap to our feet and shout ‘Objection’?
I have been a member of yougov for about 10 years, rarely get any political/covid related surveys-lots about banks though. They only send these covid restrictions surveys out to people who are confirmed mask zealots and people who want to be locked down for years. It is a lie that these surveys represent a wide scope of the public they simply don`t.
In the early days of YouGov they ran surveys where the answers were visible to all responders. The majority answers were always to the left of centre. Most members are likely to be students, the ‘just resting’ crowd on benefits and the sad and lonely retired. A truism from sales: “The answers you seek are in the questions you ask”.
Everything is happening too fast, too coordinated, too irrational and seemingly out of nowhere this variant has appeared…
Enough people have woken up to what has been going on and it has forced the controllers hand.
Stay strong folks and do not yield.
I still don’t get it. The government could simply issue advice, and hysterical people could find it and follow it. They could just leave the rest of us alone.
Yes – but where’s the fun and self-importance in letting plebs decide anything?
Yes but couldn’t they just get something off the top shelf and do it in private?
I think you’ll find they don’t mind you killing your own granny, but draw the line at theirs. (And besides which, you just look dangerous from their hidey-hole behind the sofa.)
‘Governments and media have now spent nearly two years telling the public, every single day, that Covid is an existential threat beatable only via strict and universal adherence to difficult rules. They’ve also told people explicitly that they have a civic duty to repeatedly volunteer for experimental medical substances. Thus questions about this topic are more or less perfectly calibrated to hit the weak spot of modern polling methodology.
Politicians would thus be well advised to treat these polls with enormous degrees of caution. Imposing draconian and violent policies on their own citizens because they incorrectly believe that fanatically devoted volunteers are representative of a Rousseau-ian ‘general will’ could very easily backfire.’
Given these tyrants’ unlawful and monstrous actions and decrees over the last two years, would it not be poetic justice and sublime if their attempt to coerce/force their citizens to be injected with a novel and experimental substance does indeed backfire due to overconfidence in ultimately erroneous polling, and an innumerable mass of people rise up and physically (yes physically) remove these criminals from office?
without a doubt
The ones I have seen, in many areas of life (national and local government, planning; the lot) are almost entirely loaded questions, spiced up by the omission of questions which would either upset or destroy the pollster’s predefined premises and answers. It’s just a “when did you stop beating your wife?” lark, and is both stupid and dishonest.
The lamentable fact is that many people who respond to these things, including the empanelled go-tos, are mainly as stupid and gullible, but marginally less dishonest, than the pollsters.
I worked for a few years at the international research company AGB (sold to one R. Maxwell and destroyed by him, along with the embezzled pensions of many of my colleagues), and in associated industries and while polling and audience research wasn’t whiter than white in the 1980’s, it was in general nowhere near as crooked as today’s.
People who answer Yougov polls are likely the same type of people who think a virus that has the same odds of death as being killed in a car crash is a plague.
If the odds of death by the virus is such a high risk that we should be locked in our homes, by the same risk factor we should be prevented from driving cars.
SHhhhhhh! Don’t give them ideas; anyway this is coming soon on the eco-lunacy train!
Even trains have risks as they found out in Salisbury.
What’s a 74 year-old doing driving mainline (or any) trains at all? Presumably drivers are passed for fitness periodically, but are the tests up to snuff? If you read Cummins/Gerber “Eat Rich Live Long” you will find interesting critiques of tests for prediction of potential cardiac and stroke “indisposition” and suggestion of alternative measures such as CAC scan.
The other thing I’ve wondered about (and I have not bothered scouring the reports which indicate “wheel slide” rather than any human failure to react) is whether he was lately jabbed – and whether tests have indicated subsequently whether he may in fact have suffered e.g. an ischemic incident.
The investigation showed (a) That the driver had reacted correctly, was not disabled and carried out emergency procedures, (b) a safety device operated correctly – both applied the brake in good time (c) the train lost adhesion owing to railhead conditions rendering the brakes ineffective.
Just looked at worldometer for Thailands deaths from the rona.
20,000+ since this whole debacle began.
It is still below the the road deaths which average about 25,000 a year – and that is only counting the deaths at the scene of the accident not those who die later in hospital.
Excellent stuff! Daily Sceptic yet again justifying its existence by asking the questions that need to be covered, and doing so intelligently.
Unusual to allow comments on the article page, though isn’t it? Is that an oversight, a new policy, or just a one off for this piece?
My comment ‘disappeared’. I had to repost it.
Occasionally pieces are elevated to the status of a “page” and go into the sidebar for easier access. This is one of them. Sometimes they have comments enabled, sometimes not, I think there’s no policy and just depends on the whims of whoever is operating WordPress at the time.
Such elevations to the sidebar are not at all obvious from an Android device. The only material other than Roundup or daily article publications simply disappear.
Yes!
Some while back I was idling some time with a newspaper (DM?) quiz or survey on European history/geography. The questions were not particularly taxing until #7 which went something like.
“Which European country denied
Right of Passage to the Soviet Red Army in its pursuance of the defence of freedom for all peace loving peoples of the world against Nazi aggression”
Lithuania was the obvious ‘correct’ answer from the list provided but to agree was also to accept the glaring misrepresentation of the circumstances of the time which was that Lithuania was to be occupied and annexed as part of the Nazi/Soviet non aggression pact.
I discontinued the quiz/survey.
I run a business in tax advice for small business in the practical and productive sector. I can honestly say my polls, having face to face meeting with hundreds of people is the opposite and more to YOUGOV. People come in face coverings and they are invited to take them off, nobody has declined yet. I take the precaution of opening the windows before meetings and generally in the office.
That is really the message the government and it’s dreadful advisors should be putting out. If this really was about reducing virus spread.
So, so true. About a year ago I tried taking part in a YouGov poll. Leading questions, not being able to find a response that fitted with my views…it annoyed me so much I didn’t go any further. ANY intelligent person who is not totally in line with the narrative would have done similar. Consequently the polls are ridiculously biased – not at all representative of public opinion. But they affect us, don’t they? They do me before socialising with a group of friends that I haven’t seen for a long time. I feel nervous – would some of them like me rounded up and forcibly injected? Then we meet, we talk, and I find that they’re just as against the crazy evil stuff as we are. Example – one couple run a care home. They did have the jabs because they felt they had to, but can see that we’re moving towards totalitarianism, are disgusted at the suggestions that primary school children should be ‘jabbed’, and all there yesterday felt absolutely that the ‘jab’ should be a choice, and that, no, fining people 3500 euros, as in Austria, is in no way giving people that can’t afford the fine… Read more »
A frequent source of encouragement from lockdown proper through lockdown lite, into Tiers and gradual return of ‘privileges’ this spring was the number of initially circumspect conversations that would result in mutual agreement on doubts about The Covid, distrust of government pronouncements and dislike of unnecessary Lockdown regulations.
Sadly this often turned into disappointment as they donned their mask to enter Tesco before doing their ablutions at the sanitizer shrine.
I have been unable to have similar encounters since the extension of vaccines beyond the elderly/vulnerable but I expect the same disappointed would occur.
Sadly, the Swiss result of turkeys voting for Christmas strongly suggests: No.
I read that there’ve been complaints about the conduct of the Swiss referendum and it may end up in court.
YOUGOV started up and owned , sorry ahem I mean once owned by Nadhim Zawawi the man resposnible for mass medical experimentation and serial passport denier, I mean of course its not going to produce results that follow the Governments line, I mean that would be unethical
I suspect murder and a news blackout in dutch land
Remember the night the police opened fire?
Early reports said people had died and large numbers of shell casings lying in the streets
I counted 22 gunshots in a video clip lasting less than two minutes
Over the following days the press releases changed from ‘two people in hospital with gunshot wounds’ to ‘at least three’
Since then no names of the victims, no first hand accounts, and no recriminations from relatives
What is the dutch equivalent of a ‘D’ notice?
The Daily Mail report that was linked to here at DS had 2 injured by gunshots in the sub headlines but 3 in the main text, simultaneously.
I suspect it will be we didn’t tell you about the deaths in order to prevent further disorder during which we would have shot more of you
The dutch authorities have never denied that people died that night
Jacques Ellul wisely recognised that “public opinion” is actually the product of a shift to a propaganda-based society. Public opinion is actually no-one’s opinion, but is the functional outcome of propaganda. The propagandizers themselves do not believe in the public opinion; rather they are concerned only to produce the desired effect on behaviour, and tend (like Blair’s spin-doctors) to become increasingly contemptuous even of
their own ideological basis.
Paradoxically, having engineered this mythical opinion (nowadays even using the polls themselves) governments are then themselves directed by it – “We have to do this because the public demands it,” – even when they are not entirely cynical, such as guileless MPs voting in Parliament.
And so both the people and their rulers become entangled in a self-perpetuating web of lies, and the devil is the only beneficiary.
Now consider how easy it must be to make sure your MP sees predominantly one point of view online! Think just how easy it would be to manipulate the search results of MPs, Media types, pollsters etc.
Main Regional Hospital Saturday, arrived by taxi in howling gale 07.30 for 08.05 CT scan.
General Reception was completely deserted but a kindly member of the public pushed me in a wheelchair to X-Ray Dept. Nobody questioned my lack of mask or my vax status. The single other patient and partner were likewise barefaced.
The scan went as expected and one of the non medical staff pushed me back to Reception where I had 40 minutes to wait for a taxi.
I observed as several members of staff arriving for work blithely ignored the solitary sanitizer station while gormless members of the public wandered in through the wrong side of the wide entrance doors ignoring the large No Entry signs ⛔ and direction ⬇️ arrows 🔃 on the floor. Some ostentatiously donned fancy face masks as they walked past the sanitizer while others didn’t bother with either.
Main Reception was by now fully staffed and there were Friends Of The Hospital volunteers scattered about none of whom took the slightest interest in this lack of Covid Safety indiscipline.
By now my attention was diverted by watching the grounds staff attempting to resurrect the 7 feet high illuminated festive polar bear… Read more »
Are ‘festive polar bears’ a thing now? I really must get out more.
Only in the NHS where there’s plenty of money to throw away