Writing good questions about political issues is important on PeopleCount.org. The questions need to be carefully crafted to minimize bias and to avoid the most common logical errors.
PeopleCount.org does not have the bias problem of phone surveys
In an survey given over the phone call, bias is a huge problem. When hearing answers, people have imperfect concentration and memory. They may hear something incorrectly, block out everything after hearing an answer they agree with or only remember the last answer or two. Sometimes these surveys change the order of the answers to lessen the bias.
A written question on PeopleCount.org is different. You can read the questions several times. Or you can check off an answer you like and then check another one you like better. Unlike most surveys, many questions on PeopleCount.org let you check all the answers you like.
Plus, unlike in a survey, on PeopleCount.org you can change your answer later. You can sleep on it, research it, or even skip it entirely or answer “Don’t know.” Imagine a few days later you hear someone discussing the issue. Suddenly you realize you do have an opinion! You can go back to the site and select your new answer.
The biggest problem on surveys is missing answers
This is called a “false dilemma“, asking people to choose among answers that don’t include their preferred choice.
An example is this question on Countable: Should the US authorize a military campaign against ISIL? You might want to say yes, but only if we tax ourselves to pay for it, or only if we don’t need to more soldiers, or don’t use the National Guard as we did in Iraq. But their site only allows Yes or No answers.
A common example of this is “black and white thinking”. For instance, this Pew energy poll asks people if they favor or oppose nuclear power. The results were about 50/50. On the PeopleCount Traditional Energy questions, 63% were against nuclear power using our existing light-water reactor technology.
Why are people negative about these reactors? Because if something goes wrong, they tend to blow up, like the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters. Plus they generate toxic radioactive waste. Thorium reactors and fast-breeder reactors tend to fizzle out if something goes wrong instead of blow up. These reactors also don’t generate much nuclear waste. Even better, fast-breeder reactors would consume our current nuclear waste as their fuel.
Even though PeopleCount users were more negative on nuclear power than the Pew survey, when asked if we should research or build Thorium or Fast-Breeder reactors, 80% said we should at least continue research!
Another common problem is only allowing single answers
iSideWith.com on their political quiz avoids the problem above by offering two simple answers plus an “other stances” button which reveals more answers. Click on this third button for the first question, What is your stance on abortion? I could imagine a pro-choice person wanting to click on several of answers.
On PeopleCount.org, our borrowed, prototype technology allowed us to create questions where you could select multiple answers, and we used them often. But often I favored some answers more than others and disliked or hated others. We’re in the process of designing a user interface that will give you this flexibility.