As it gets closer to our (American) mid-term elections, we’re about to be inundated with surveys and polls. But, even between elections, surveys are everywhere, for better or worse.
To help filter the signals from the noise, here is my list of tips for critically reading reports based on survey data that I’ve collected over the years.
If you’re a reader of survey data, use these tips to help you interpret survey data you see in the future.
If you’re publishing survey data, be sure to consider these as well, especially if your readers have read this post.
To critically read survey data, you need to know:
- Who was surveyed and how
- What they were asked
- How the results are stated
Let’s look at each of these a bit more…