SO MANY QUESTIONS, TOO FEW TRUE ANSWERS

       Opinion polls influence the public and politicians, but are they really accurate? With so many polls on politics and society being taken in Bangkok every week, it might be sensible to ask not just how reliable they are but also whether the public has become too reliant on them. These are pertinent questions in an age when the public, as well as politicians, have become increasingly influenced by the results of the latest surveys. Pollsters may try to assure you their work is accurate enough to be trusted, but even those in the industry are well aware of the many inherent problems.
       In 1988, the American Association of Public Opinion Research heard its president, Eleanor Singer, warn against a list of caveats including: "the lack of truthful responses to questions; the failure to do justice to the richness of people's experience; the failure of people to understand certain types of questions that depend on memory or insight into their own feelings; the tendency of researchers to impose their own framework; the fact that certain words in questions mean different things to different people; the tendency of people to give an opinion even when they do not have a real point of view," and more.
       Suffice to say, when faced with instant questions, people often respond in a knee-jerk fashion. Often left behind are careful weighing of the issue, the chance for the respondent to hear other voices before making his own judgement, the restrictive and top-down framing of the question, and the abandonment of a nuanced and qualitative approach supplanted by easy-to-digest quantitative data. All these constitute a cause for concern, especially when polls aren't just prone to being inaccurate, shallow and not truly reflecting people's thoughtful and deliberative views, but also tend to reinforce results in the direction the findings dictate.
       Daniel Yankelovich, an American expert on public opinion and judgement noted in his 1991 book, "Coming to Public Judgement" that, "The 'quickie' opinion polls that make newspaper headlines … or 30-second sound-bites based on simplistic questions, are a menace that has grown all too familiar … Analysts found that by asking people a few simple additional questions on any issue, such as how personally involved they were with it, how much they might change their mind, one could determine which opinions were volatile and which were firm."
       Yankelovich posited that the quality of public opinion should be measured by three criteria: Willingness to take responsibility for the consequences of one's views, firmness, and consistency. Or, to put it more simply: A stable, consistent and responsible view.
       "The ability to resolve internal conflicts of values is the foundation of good-quality public opinion … Resolving conflicts of values takes times; it is painful work, and people avoid it as much and for as long as they can."
       All these are elements are missing in a world of instant and incessant polling, so it's good to bear in mind what we may possibly be missing out.