[EL] Push polling

Fri May 3 12:58:32 PDT 2013

Somehow this became a polling listserve rather than a legal one, but since we are there....

The easiest way to tell whether one is message testing or push polling is sample size.

Polls with sample sizes of a tenth of the population are probably push polls.

Polls with sample sizes of a few hundred to maybe a thousand are probably trying to discover information.

Or create information to be publicly leaked.  The create information ones are maybe even worse than push polls.  Pools that are "poorly" designed where they test hyper-inflammatory, unidirectional messages and THEN ask horse race questions not only sway voters, but they create false information that is then peddled as real polling.

Another reason that credible pollsters insist that the entire poll should be disclosed (and the media shouldn't cover only partially disclosed polls).

Kevin Greenberg
(215) 279-9912

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Adam Morse
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 3:53 PM
To: Barry C. Burden
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] Push polling

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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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> [mailto: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<mailto: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

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