>The fact is that "polls" and "surveys" of this nature mean next to nothing.
> 1,400,000 total surveys mailed by Ross in 2000.
>
> 31 percent, response rate from mothers who received the survey.

>How can these statistics be used with any reliability at all?'

They can't. I have worked in the survey research business and
have studied my share of statistics. Survey research is very
hard to do well. There are so many factors - getting a truly
random sample (or as truly as you can get), getting a representative
response, getting a good response rate, asking questions that all
those surveyed will read the same way, getting data that can be
compared with other serious research in a meaningful way. It's
a lot of work and very expensive to do it right.

This is the reason I don't answer web based (CNN type) surveys.
The responses really are meaningless. One can only hope that
policy people know that as well and don't rely on Ross and CNN
data to set policy. There are plenty of govt agencies that
are engaged in serious research. There are often still problems
with it, but at least they are trying to address the problems and
the goal of the research is usually furthering our knowledge, not
the bottom line.

Naomi Bar-Yam

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