Did you see those results in The Gazette’s TEL-US Poll back in January? Sobering, to say the least.
The question that day (Jan. 10) under “Daily Notebook” in the Metro/Iowa section was: “What kind of example for American youth has President Clinton set with his misleading testimony under oath?”
The results appeared in raw numbers rather than the usual percentages: Good, 308; Average, 12; Poor, 168. (The percentages: 63 and 3 and 34.)
Did you get that? More than 6 of every 10 callers thought it was OK for the president to give misleading testimony under oath.
Forget the president. Forget politics. Forget — for the moment — morality. Instead, think polls. Think specifically TEL-US Poll, and ask yourself: Are these numbers valid? Sadly, the answer is: No one knows.
Why doesn’t anyone know?
The question was “loaded,” suggested alert reader Tom Vavra of Ely, who wrote a letter to the editor (Jan. 21). Another letter writer, Allen Krob of Walker, expressed his disbelief (Jan. 17): “…are there actually parents who teach their children that lying to and misleading others is acceptable behavior?”
Harold Manley Sr. of Iowa City got on the phone. He told me the poll is “misinforming the public.” He’s right. To prove his point, he said he called once to vote one way and again to vote another way.
Another reader e-mailed me about the poll, wondering what the late Les Moeller, longtime director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, would say. Les, I responded, would be shaking his head in disbelief.
Let’s take a closer look at what this is all about. Maybe you’ve noticed the small print at the bottom of the poll. It says the poll is “a non-scientific sampling of public opinion.”
Do we really know what that means? Let’s rephrase the question: Are the TEL-US Poll results accurate or reliable? Is there any way to gauge the quality of this information?
The answers are the same: no and no.
Maybe the poll once was an attractive idea to generate reader feedback via The Gazette’s CITYLINE. But no longer. The novelty has worn off. There’s no way to gauge the quality of the information.
The Gazette should put the TEL-US Poll to rest.
The poll first appeared May 17, 1991. The question was, “Should casino style gambling be allowed on a riverboat in the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids?” (Of the 133 responses, 46, or 35 percent, said yes, and 87, or 65 percent, said no.)
Assistant Managing Editor Phyllis Fleming says she has been coordinating the TEL-US Poll almost since it began.
Questions come from a variety of sources, the newsroom as well as the public.
In her office just off the newsroom, Fleming displays a 3-inch stack of past TEL-US Poll results. Some people, she says with a twinge of embarrassment, regard the results as “credible information.”
Of course, they are not. Managing Editor Mark Bowden agrees. “It’s not news,” he says. “We do not use (the results) to justify news coverage.” It is, however, an opportunity for readers to sound off about issues, he says.
Nonetheless, readers use TEL-US Poll results to support their views. For example, one reader wrote a letter published Feb. 2 about dove hunting. He stated, “As the Jan. 26 TEL-US poll results show…”
The TEL-US Poll came up recently at a Cedar Rapids City Council meeting. A speaker, citing the TEL-US Poll, was told not to take such results seriously. In reporting the incident Jan. 14, the alternative weekly newspaper ICON referred to the “wildly unscientific Tel-Us polls, through which the sufficiently agitated or time-endowed may call in and record their answer to that day’s question.”
Harsh words. But on target.
Manipulating telephone polls is easy. Besides a phone, it takes only time and patience. Automatic redialing helps.
How do other newspapers regard unscientific polling? Not very highly. I put the question via e-mail to several members of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO). Mind you, this was not a poll.
Most ONO members responding were sharply critical. They described unscientific polling as “vanity polls,” “of little or no value,” “almost an oxymoron,” “if it isn’t scientific, it isn’t a poll.”
Dennis Foley, whose newspaper, The Orange County (Calif.) Register, also conducts a daily informal call-in poll, reports his editors have mixed feelings about its merits.
Foley himself doesn’t: “I think our job should be to give accurate news information. Such phone-in calls can be misinterpreted and manipulated.”
Lou Gelfand of the Minneapolis Star Tribune took the trouble to call. An unscientific poll, he said, “doesn’t mean anything. It’s a good example of why media lose credibility.”
I agree.
Checking poll quality
Sound polling follows strict procedures. Here’s a generally accepted checklist of what you should know to determine a poll’s merits: (1) the identity of the sponsor, (2) the exact wording of the questions asked, (3) a definition of the population sampled, (4) the sample size and the response rate, (5) the margin of error, (6) which results are based on which part of the sample, (7) when the interviewing was done and (8) how it was done (e.g., by phone, personal).
