Yesterday, inspired by this young lady's post on the topic, I decided that I would toy with Angus Reid a little further. I used my home computer to create a second free email account (not hotmail this time), and successfully applied for the Angus Reid Forums a second time. On this occasion the demographic profile I gave them was a little more coherent, although I listed my home province as British Columbia and told Angus Reid I owned a boat!
My further conclusions: it does NOT look like Angus Reid is tracking IP addresses, which means that you can create as many profiles in their on-line forums as you want from a single computer. One person could, for example, become an army of Tories (something which, given their weird results lately, I suspect has already happened).
Meanwhile, over the weekend my first Angus Reid profile (the woman with the male name who was 50+, still a student, and made over $100,000 per year) got an email asking her to participate in a survey re. corporate citizenship: what companies were known for their community outreach efforts in what areas. So, for example, is the Royal Bank know for their contributions to kids' sports? That kind of thing.
I gave my on-line salute to Ing Banking, because that German guy in their commercials is dead sexxxy (he could only be more sexxxy if he had a fencing scar), and to KFC, because I was hungry when I did the survey and the idea of a pile of greasy chicken appealed to me. Otherwise they all pretty much got the big thumbs down.
7 comments:
The ING guy is Dutch. He's a soap star in Holland. Has a great voice, like he's trying to not swallow a gulp of milk.
Online polls may have some problems most of which can be fixed with some tweaking, but traditional phone polls have become a joke. Eight out of ten numbers called do not respond or hang up when told it's a poll (as I've done several times). So who does answer a phone poll, the unemployed with nothing better to do, the lonely, the poor who don't have call ID or answering machines. In other words NDP and LPC clients for the most part.
anon,
I suspect you are right about online polls in theory. The Angus Reid one seems immensely sloppily done, however.
I'm bad just like you are. I regularly pick up the newspaper at the grocery store to read the sports section and then put it back when I'm finished. And don't get me started about all those times I've ordered a pizza using my middle name instead of my first.
I wouldn't say it's as bad as you expect. The vast majority of people will answer how they would on the phone.
The big problem is that your pool is from internet-savvy individuals who want to answer polling surveys. Is that a proper reflection of society?
With a phone survey, however, the fact that you have a certain area code tells something about you. You can't really lie over the phone about where you live, or if you're male or female. And etc.
So who does answer a phone poll, the unemployed with nothing better to do, the lonely, the poor who don't have call ID or answering machines. In other words NDP and LPC clients for the most part.
God, this is so fucking stupid.
If this is the type of person online pollsters are attracting, how do they control for the "the insane."
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