Gays and lesbians are more affluent and more likely to vote than heterosexual Americans, according to a new online poll.
OK, let's just stop right there, shall we? In that one sentence, we learn almost everything that could possibly be wrong with that poll.
1) It's an online poll. Automatically, this biases the results upward; you need a computer -- or access to one -- and a connection to the net. Additionally, as an online poll, it gets almost purely those people motivated to answer the questions; they sought it out somehow. It's not any type of random sample. (And as a sample of a relatively small, self identified group, there's no way it could be completely random, true.)
2) It's a poll that asks about sexuality. You will only get people answering such things when they're comfortable doing so. It just happens that relative comfort with such things is likely to follow income lines; the more secure you are financially, the more secure you are in answering obnoxious personal questions generally.
3) Many people only have access to the net through work. Which may chart where they visit. Which means that many people who might otherwise have answered and helped give a truer picture would never go near this, because they don't want the work to know what they do.
4) A later section of the survey results notes "a high percentage of gays and lesbians were employed in computer or technical related fields." OK, say it with me, folks: it's an online poll. You think that maybe -- just maybe -- the method of taking the survey might bias the results in that section toward more technical fields? Ya think? You're not comfortable working online, working with computers, you maybe don't ever see the poll, hear about it, know about it ...?
It's really a textbook case of demonstrable survey bias. GSociety, the group for which Syracuse University composed and performed the study, "is a leading media and entertainment company in the $340 billion global gay and lesbian marketplace. GSociety offers advertisers online and offline marketing opportunities to reach more than 2.2 million members of the gay and lesbian community per month," offering "concept bundling", whatever that is, to advertisers. They also state that they are part of an alliance "destined to make an historic impact on gay/lesbian consumer research". Um. Yeah. Right. In any event, given that type of presentation, they have every reason in the world to present gay consumers as more affluent, more motivated, more everything than heterosexuals.
It is ... if not quite a lie -- after all, the people who respond are, we assume, what they say they are -- it is certainly an extraordinarily selective presentation.
Any road, a more detailed breakout of the survey results may be found at the glcensus.org website.
Or try a more detailed and realistic overview.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/17/2001: polluters ho!