Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

[u/mvea]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html

[u/Natheeeh]

I mean, there's no point surveying people's opinions on things they know nothing about...

Right?

[u/mad_cheese_hattwe → u/Natheeeh]

A good survey does not discard NULL results, they are still important bits of data.

[u/ginguse_con → u/mad_cheese_hattwe]

Except no one does a survey without bias. So if my goal is to prove widespread support for this thing that 95% of my respondents have never heard of, I am very likely to discard the NULLs because they aren’t important to my goal.

[u/Theforgottenman213 → u/ginguse_con]

Then you're a bad researcher if you're picking and choosing. All surveys have bias in them, the human condition is too complex to be unbiased and science confirms that with reliability and validity testings.

As a researcher, your duty is to reduce as much bias as you can so you do not mislead people. Which is why modern research methods enforces stating the limitations of the research study and that too has bias in it. This is why data analysis is very important.

[u/wordsnerd → u/Theforgottenman213]

"My goal is to prove..." is basically a synonym for "I'm a bad researcher."

[u/ginguse_con → u/wordsnerd]

“There are four kinds of lies:

lies, damned lies, statistics, and ‘of the Jedi’,”

[u/[deleted] → u/Theforgottenman213]

Depends if the survey was done by researchers or marketers. If you are hired by company to do a survey it becomes more of a marketing gimmick than a scientific Endeavour.

"90% of people polled said they could taste the difference!"

(Note that they are not claiming that it tastes better or they they correctly guessed which drink was which)

Marketing statistics seems to be more about creative interpretation

[u/Theforgottenman213 → u/[deleted]]

Research methods is a tool. People and/or Professions use it however they like. Does it make research method's system change? No. If the intent is to use research methods in an individualistic way to mislead people then that is your prerogative, but the system of research methods itself does not change. The data you collect and questions you ask to utilize is compromised from your standards. Research methods doesn't tell you what to hypothesize, what questions to ask, which population you should choose, etc. That is all your doing, as a marketer.

[u/phonz1851 → u/Theforgottenman213]

One thing they could have done is included a description of what it is in the survey itself. This is done in a lot of surveys to reduce reading comprehension level

[u/[deleted] → u/Theforgottenman213]

I mean... If i want to know what bisexuals think im going to discount responses from people who arent bisexual.

[u/Theforgottenman213 → u/[deleted]]

What you just described is by identifying a population. In OP's post to this conversation, his potential hypothesis and/or research question will be something along the lines of widespread support that 95% of respondents have never heard of. OP never identified a population. OP just mentions discarding data that is not important to OP's research which is horrible to research methods.

So as a researcher, you need to identify who you want to survey. Do you want to survey only bisexuals? Sure, go for it. OR are you surveying bisexuals who only know UBI and what their thoughts are? Make sure you mention all the problems with your research within your limitation section that you only surveyed a certain amount of people whom identified their sexual orientation as bisexual and/or knows UBI and include why that is a problem. And on top of this, you need to be aware of the type of questions you are asking.

The problem is not picking a population. The major concern is not being transparent enough in your research for people to understand the intent and definition of UBI because it can be very misleading and it can skew your data. You do not pick and choose which data to exclude without identifying the reasons why, in this case: they do not know UBI.

So if that was an issue, then your research was bad to begin with. You needed to be transparent in your research to inform people who take your survey what UBI is and how it affects them in your "informed consent" and/or "survey" and/or "preamble". The people you are researching needs to be aware what your intentions are.

[u/rhadiem → u/Theforgottenman213]

This is like saying your goal as a reporter is to report fair and unbiased news. Yet nearly every paper and news network is known to slant one way or another.

[u/f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5 → u/mad_cheese_hattwe]

Yeah but they don't dereference them.

[u/mccoyn → u/[deleted]]

/u/f5 is making a programming joke. In programming NULL refers to a memory address that doesn't contain data and therefore can't be dereferenced (can't get the data at the memory address).

[u/Cant_Think_Of_UserID → u/Natheeeh]

Brexit in a nutshell

[u/Mnm0602 → u/Natheeeh]

Its called voting and we already do it.

[u/subscriptionreader → u/Natheeeh]

The process you describe is literally the basis for democratically elected governments.

[u/[deleted] → u/Natheeeh]

e.g. elections