[EL] Push polling

Fri May 3 12:53:28 PDT 2013

I'm curious what people think about the ethics of polls that may have dual
purposes--both testing messaging and spreading information.  Let's assume
that the information in the poll is all true (or at least, the person
writing the poll believes it to be true).

Is a poll that says, "Would you be less likely to vote for Candidate Smith
if you knew that he advocated the legalization of marijuana?", where the
goal of the poll is both to figure out whether ads saying that Candidate
Smith advocated the legalization of marijuana would be a worthwhile use of
campaign funds but also to increase awareness of Candidate Smith's
position, inherently unethical?  Unethical if the electoral position of the
people running the ad is not disclosed?  Ethical as long as it accurately
describes Candidate Smith's position?  Ethical only if the sample is small
relative to the electorate?

I haven't thought about these issues much, but at first blush, I'm not sure
I see the ethical problem if the statement is true.  But if that's the
case, then it's not obvious what the ethical problem is if the statement is
true AND the only goal is to spread the information.  I'm curious what
other people's perspectives on this are, since I think many of you have
thought about these issues to a much greater degree than I have.  (I see
what the AAPOR says about this issue--legitimate message testing is fine,
but if it's just about spreading information/disinformation, then it
"abuses the trust" people have in research organizations. At the same time,
I tend to view the "ethical standards" of professional organizations as
being mostly about the professional interests of their members--it's in the
interest of pollsters to separate themselves from push polls, in the same
way that legal ethics has many provisions that are more designed to protect
the status and prerogatives of lawyers than to protect the public.  I'm
curious whether people think that the AAPOR's position is correct, and if
so, why, and where the contours are in fuzzy cases.)

--Adam Morse

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Barry C. Burden <bcburden at wisc.edu> wrote:

> Agree with Adam.
>
> By the way, researchers engage in deception all of the time. Much of the
> work done by lab psychologists requires deception to make the experiments
> effective. IRBs are clearly approving those projects. It's all about
> balancing risk and benefit, plus adequate debriefing after the study is
> done. Push "polls" don't follow any of these guidelines.
>
> Barry
>
>
> On 05/03/13, *"Schultz, David A." * <dschultz at hamline.edu> wrote:
>
> Amen to Adam.
>
> Furthermore, the only way a push-poll works is by deception--describing to
> someone something that is not true.
>
> I chaired our Human Subjects Research Panel for a decade.  If research
> proposal came before me or my committee with a survey relying upon
> deception we would not have approved it.  Such polling would arguably
> violate federal law (45 CFR 46) regarding the use of human subjects for
> research.
>
> Remember that the Stanley Milgram experiment relied on deception and the
> lack of informed consent is one of the problems with that experiment.
> Push-polling uses deception and rests upon a violation of informed consent.
>
>
> On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Adam Bonin <adam at boninlaw.com> wrote:
>
>> If it’s ethical, and a “valuable service,” it’s not a push poll.  A push
>> poll is an advertisement done over the phone in the form of a poll.  It is
>> not a poll.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> --Adam****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:
>> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] *On Behalf Of *Jon Roland
>> *Sent:* Friday, May 03, 2013 3:19 PM
>> *To:* law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] Push polling****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Not necessarily. There are all kinds of push polls. I can certainly
>> design one that would be ethical and a valuable service to public discourse.
>>
>> On 05/03/2013 01:35 PM, Michael P McDonald wrote: ****
>>
>> You say that a poll should not pretend to be something it is not. A hallmark of a push poll is falsehoods masquerading as a poll, thereby giving the impression they must be true since they are delivered in a question format that credible polling organizations use.****
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> -- Jon****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------****
>>
>> Constitution Society               http://constitution.org****
>>
>> 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322           twitter.com/lex_rex****
>>
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>>
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>
>
>
> --
> David Schultz, Professor
> Editor, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)
> Hamline University
> School of Business
> 570 Asbury Street
> Suite 308
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> FacultyRow SuperProfessor, 2012, 2013
>
> --
> Barry C. Burden
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> Department of Political Science
> https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/bcburden/web/
>
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