Dumb Britain round-up

In a bold move which blithely ignores the actual, y'know, academics who work here, The Hegemon hosts a series of poll questions for webpage viewers to vote on. They are, of course, insulting to any first-year student who's been to a lecture on methodology.

For instance:

Can you measure happiness?

• Yes: 33%

• No: 59%

• Don't know: 8%

Perhaps not - but you can always ask an uninformed public about whether you can run polls on it. I suspect my colleagues in Psychology would be hard-pressed to find an objective, meaningful definition of 'happiness', let alone 'measure' it.

How's this one?

Will Britain become a nation of renters rather than homeowners?

• Yes: 68%

• No:  23%

• Don't know: 9%

Unless all the respondent are housing economists (not that they've got a clue either), the only honest respondents are those who clicked 'don't know'.

This one just makes me angry:

• Is the current big freeze in the UK a sign of climate change?
• Yes - 46%
• No - 47%
• Don't know - 7%

It panders to the kind of arseholes who write Daily Express front pages. Again, only a climate scientist can have a reasonable opinion. It implies that it's OK to blithely link local, limited events to systemic shifts. It encourages the culture of 'what I reckon'. I know that's a bit rich coming from a blogger, but I tend not to spout off about stuff of which I know nowt. Ahem.

My favourite is this one:

Do you understand the 'Alternative Vote' system?

• Yes: 54%

• No: 39%

• Don't know: 7%

The result doesn't tell you what percentage understand AV. It tells you the percentage of voters who think they understand AV. Which isn't the same thing.

I'm hosting a poll of my own:
Should poll questions be written by people who understand statistics and research methodology? 

• Yes:
• No:  
• Don't know: