A colleague at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies at Loma Linda has asked me to pass this on to you:
IMPORTANT SURVEY ON ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION – Your help is needed! The Loma Linda University Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies is conducting a groundbreaking survey on attitudes toward the environment and conservation, particularly of those who love plants and animals. The results from this study, to be published in a professional journal, will contribute to our understanding of the role of plants and animals in society. Participants are urgently needed to complete the survey, which should take about 5-10 minutes of your time. Please click on this link.
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In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Shared on FB, and survey completed. 🙂
Your colleague needs practice making surveys. Far too many of the rankings on that one were phrased in the negative:
“X is not the case”: agree, neutral disagree.
Feh. 29% of the people answering that will get the sense wrong and give an answer false to what they intend. Which makes the results untrustworthy.
I didn’t have any trouble understanding the questions.
There were some questions where there were not enough choices, forcing me to skip the question entirely. Not all of the yes/no questions necessarily had a yes/no answer.
I agree with both Russell and Gwen. Unfortunately the questions disappear when completed and one cannot remember the exact wording, but double negatives are always tricky. Wyatt said he had no trouble. I wonder whether he really did understand the questions?
I spent some ten years of my life writing psychometric software and implementing tests and found that the precise wording of a question had an inordinate effect on test results, particularly when conducting them with less-well educated respondees (into which class one might venture to place the majority of the U.S. public?).
I did understand the questions. The “agree/disagree” wording makes it quite simple. The reason “agree/disagree” is used is to avoid the double negative wording.
“There are no birds flying out of my ears”
I think about that. I think about what it means. I strongly feel that there are no birds flying out of my ears. I feel that this statement, “There are no birds flying out of my ears”, very much reflects what I am thinking. I thus strongly agree with it.
For this:
“Wyatt said he had no trouble. I wonder whether he really did understand the questions?”
I think, no, I really did understand the questions. There was no time when I did not feel that I understood the statements being made and I had great confidence in picking out an answer reflecting my thoughts. So, I would say, I “strongly disagree” with this statement wondering if I understood the questions.
I agree with Gwen – some of the questions were of the type:
Who created the universe?
(a) Abraham’s god
(b) Brahma
As for how questions are asked (as pointed out by Clam#5), that’s pretty obvious when it comes to political polls. In the British comedy “Yes, Prime Minister” one character demonstrates the art of crafting poll questions.
MadScientist, I just took the survey, and I did not see any absurd questions like that. Certainly not that one! Which questions were they? Could be the survey changes for different takers?
Well, I don’t agree with those who called all the questions into question. On the other hand, I felt that my personal participation had more to do with establishing error bars than influencing actual numerical trends.
Perhaps I would be better at answering surveys if I knew even less about statistics?
You do realise that the sample selection method being used makes this survey valueless don’t you?
CB
This requires pharyngulation. What an appalling piece of irritating nonsense. i want 3 minutes back
Have no fear, Christine O’Donnell is here to lecture on both science and constitutional law:
O’Donnell questions separation of church, state
This is “how to pharangulate a survey”? Somehow the readership of Greg Laden isn’t quite the typical cross section of society.
I’m going with the assumption that the scientists doing this survey know that they are surveying the Internet and have a sense of that that means. Most projects like this have multiple methodologies. There is a good chance that this has been thought through.
I’m promised a copy of the resulting publication. We can check out how it all went!
If we assume that those behind the survey are not total incompetents (dangerous I know) and given that everybody lies, I think there is a distinct possibility that the survey is really about something other than its cover story.
CB