Polymath Bob Shepherd, a frequent contributor to this blog, lives in Florida. He recently received a survey from his member of Congress. He shows how deeply deceptive such a survey can be.
He writes:
I received in my email yesterday yet another transparently biased “survey” from my Flor-uh-duh Congressman Scott Franklin. It read as follows:
Do you support a Parents’ Bill of Rights to increase transparency on what children are being taught in school and how tax dollars are being spent? (yes/no)
Note that the survey DOES NOT ask,
Do you support allowing a handful of backward, provincial, undemocratic, authoritarian, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, white supremacist, Christian nationalist, fundamentalist wackjobs from among the parents in your community to decide what will be taught in your kids’ schools, what books can be in their library, who can teach, and what teachers can and cannot say? (yes/no)
These two questions are in fact equivalent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“No” to the first survey question (Do you support a Parents’ Bill of Rights?)
“Yes” to the second (Do you support allowing a handful of backward,…)
Huh? I am assuming a huge snark alert.
Even the supposedly more legitimate surveys are iffey, especially in the claims they seem to make and the caveats they don’t mention.
These kind of questions are why I don’t participate in surveys OR believe in the “crunched” data from these surveys.
During my last 20 years of teaching, surveys from the state supposedly evaluating how the school was performing its duties filled way more time than they were worth. Almost every survey I ever took attempted to assign a number value to how things were going. It was abundantly clear that assigning a point value on a 1-5 scale where 5 was the best would mean a more positive rating for the school, the principal, or the community. This produced a lot of double logic on my part to try to produce the best score possible if I thought the alternative might produce a worse outcome.
For example, a question might say:
Teachers are required at my school to submit detailed lesson plans each week for review by the principal. Choosing a 5 would mean that this is a common practice at my school, and it would grade my principal higher. But I thought writing detailed lesson plans for a person already overworked was a perfect waste of time, and I really liked the fact that my principal trusted his faculty enough not to require this.
I was forced to lie and say what was not true in order to rate my principal higher in the matter, which was the truth. In other words, the survey made me lie in order to tell the truth.
Aside from the imbecility of such a system, it allowed successive administrations to claim they were gleaning “input” from the teachers when they were actually getting nothing. Garbage in feces out.
strong summation
I just loved the Likert Scale questions!
Prospective teachers in Flor-uh-duh are required by the state to take several exams given by Pear$on and to pay Pear$on a lot of money for the privilege. One of these, the Professional Education Test, has a bunch of questions that deal with topics related to so-called “Education Reform,” and anyone with a brain will know that the “right” answers are all obscenely, clearly wrong. In order to pass the test, you have to answer the questions AS IF you were an Ed Deformer, entirely sold on so-called accountability to the puerile, backward CC$$ or CC$$-derived “standards” via the invalid state standardized tests. This is what I dutifully did, steam coming out of my ears the entire time. I knew what the rapacious fools who put together this test WANTED people to say. After all, they make a LOT of money themselves from doing invalid testing.
Same shtick. Doubtless my Congressman uses the “results” from his obviously biased surveys for propaganda purposes: “Well, 96 percent of my constituents support [insert egregiously stupid and backward and provincial and dangerous policy here].
I passed with flying colors because I know what Pear$on and other Ed Deformers think that I am supposed to think and answered accordingly. A breathtakingly biased test.
“Do you support a Parents’ Bill of Rights to increase transparency on what children are being taught in school and how tax dollars are being spent? (yes/no)”
No, I ALREADY HAVE THOSE RIGHTS. I can use the Freedom of Information Act, read Board of Education minutes, attend meetings because of the Sunshine and Open Meetings law, vote on Board members and legislators who levy taxes, vote on local tax levies and…
I can complain a lot to the principal and superintendent and if they don’t do anything, the local paper or tv investigative reporter will welcome the “tip.”
Hemingway and Postman & Weingartner called it “Crap Detecting” (Well, Hemingway used a different first word). If only the media would do the same when they report that “A gop poll shows the 80% of parents want their kids to learn” – as if no one else does.
amen
TRUE!
GOP, DARK MONEY & School Elections: https://truthout.org/articles/dark-money-school-groups-are-trying-to-buy-the-midterm-elections-for-the-gop/
So Bob the survey you described is basically a push poll. That said your Congressman’s political opponents or other interested third parties should be conducting the “surveys “ with the questions you proposed. That they aren’t as brutally frank is the problem
Frankly I am more troubled by some of what passes for journalism in our Nations two papers of record. It is obvious to most on this blog in the area of education. But the scope of the failure goes far beyond
That they aren’t as brutally frank is the problem.
This is exactly the problem with Democratic messaging. It is not brutally frank. It doesn’t say, look, we are the only industrialized democracy that does not have national health, and so our healthcare costs TWICE as much on average, per person. So, the Republicans have been LYING TO YOU about this. There is no other word for it. They have lied to you.
I might phrase that a bit stronger. Anthony Weiner did have some strong points .. “They want you to die”. to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Or for that matter any taxes
I’ve lost count of the number of survey’s designed to support a specific bias, and all of the ones I recall were from the far right fishing for engineered cherry picked responses that supported a far right bias.
Until you start answering a survey, there’s no way to tell if its a loaded survey.
If the survey topic sounded interesting and I had the time, I’d open and start answering. Once I determined that there were no questions with a selection of answers that didn’t support my thinking, that the survey apparently didn’t care about, I stopped answering and deleted the survey and the email that carried it to my inbox.
Some other examples of “survey questions” from Representative Franklin designed to provide him with the answers that he wants to hear:
Which of the following constitutional rights do you think is most under threat today?
–Freedom of speech
–Second amendment gun rights
–Religious liberty
–I do not believe any rights are under threat
Do you believe that the Biden Administration is doing enough to counter the threat posed by China?
–Yes
–No
–No opinion
How much of a threat do you believe China poses to the United States?
–Severe
–Significant
–Minimal
–Not a threat
–No opinion
Do you think the issue of abortion should be addressed at the state or federal level?
–State
–Federal
–No opinion
Do you believe the U.S. should restart domestic energy production to avoid buying oil from adversaries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran?
–Yes
–No
–No opinion
The worst part is that most responders don’t know what the questions even mean because they don’t know the facts underlying them. They couldn’t find China on a map. They know nothing about energy or oil. They don’t understand freedom. So, these are extremely effective survey questions for getting the answers you want.
Sadly, exactly right, Expat.
I was discussing religion and voting on another site (in reference to Raskin, the presidency and being Jewish). A 2019 Gallup poll says that 93% of voters don’t care about a candidate being Jewish. That surprised me until I read the question which was more or less, “If your party’s candidate is Jewish, would you still vote for the evil candidate on the other side?” The survey doesn’t really answer the question people think it does and is just a glossing over of real, underlying prejudices.
Alas
Surveys that are not actually surveys are very common. As it happens the episode of More or Less, a BBC podcast discusses one in it’s most recent podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001bz47
The discussion starts at about 8:40.
Correction:
“He recently received a survey from his Congress CRITTTER.”