Friday, February 12, 2010

Go Figure


Be careful about how much credence you place in polls.

From CBS News...
A new CBS News/ New York Times poll finds that 59 percent say they now support allowing "homosexuals" to serve in the U.S. military. But the numbers differ when the question is changed to whether Americans support "gay men and lesbians" serving in the military. When the question is asked that way, 70 percent of Americans say they support gay men and lesbians serving in the military.

I have my suspicions about who the people are that don't understand the difference between "homosexual" and "gay and lesbian" but that's not really the point. The main issue is that the wording of a question is key and can skew polls significantly even when it seems like the choice of words is fairly benign.

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