What I would really like to see is the question “how important is this to you?”. If you ask people isolated questions they will, of course, have opinions about them and possibly quite strong opinions. But is same sex marriage as important as Mr Gove wanting to change the education system? Is it as important as the Government’s policies for the NHS? For Social Security? For dealing with the economic crisis? I would guess that while most people have an opinion about same sex relationships, they don’t really count terribly strongly in the overall scheme of what’s important for the… Read more »
Feria
11 years ago
The published YouGov tables don’t include any cross-breaks by religion. So Dr. Clements is using some information that’s been made available privately to him to find out which respondents were Anglican. Yet he neglects to tell us what definition of “Anglican” he has used – is it all believing Anglicans; or just those who attend services more often than some critical frequency; or just those on church electoral rolls? As Dr. Clements himself points out, it makes a big difference.
Bill Dilworth
11 years ago
Excellent point, Erika. When I take those online quizzes designed to reveal what your political or religious affiliation ought to be, I find it frustrating when the questions aren’t weighted to give some sort of sense of proportion, too.
John Roch
11 years ago
A YouGov survey is hardly an “online quiz”. I speak as one who receives their invitations to complete surveys.
What I would really like to see is the question “how important is this to you?”. If you ask people isolated questions they will, of course, have opinions about them and possibly quite strong opinions. But is same sex marriage as important as Mr Gove wanting to change the education system? Is it as important as the Government’s policies for the NHS? For Social Security? For dealing with the economic crisis? I would guess that while most people have an opinion about same sex relationships, they don’t really count terribly strongly in the overall scheme of what’s important for the… Read more »
The published YouGov tables don’t include any cross-breaks by religion. So Dr. Clements is using some information that’s been made available privately to him to find out which respondents were Anglican. Yet he neglects to tell us what definition of “Anglican” he has used – is it all believing Anglicans; or just those who attend services more often than some critical frequency; or just those on church electoral rolls? As Dr. Clements himself points out, it makes a big difference.
Excellent point, Erika. When I take those online quizzes designed to reveal what your political or religious affiliation ought to be, I find it frustrating when the questions aren’t weighted to give some sort of sense of proportion, too.
A YouGov survey is hardly an “online quiz”. I speak as one who receives their invitations to complete surveys.
I was not part of the panel on this occasion.
Gosh, John, I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.
I didn’t mean to make a disparaging comparison, but to agree that unweighted questions are problematic.