This Week’s Poll Closed Due to Self-Selection Bias

I’ve never closed a weekly poll before, I’ve always let them run Sunday to Sunday.  But on Monday I decided to close this week’s poll. Why? When the number of votes after 36 hours exceeded the typical number of votes for an entire week it was very clear I was not getting the perspective of my usual reader. The poll had zero value with such a highly biased sample:

Self-selection bias, which is possible whenever the group of people being studied has any form of control over whether to participate. Participants’ decision to participate may be correlated with traits that affect the study, making the participants a non-representative sample. For example, people who have strong opinions or substantial knowledge may be more willing to spend time answering a survey than those who do not. Another example is online and phone-in polls, which are biased samples because the respondents are self-selected. Those individuals who are highly motivated to respond, typically individuals who have strong opinions, are overrepresented, and individuals that are indifferent or apathetic are less likely to respond. This often leads to a polarization of responses with extreme perspectives being given a disproportionate weight in the summary. As a result, these types of polls are regarded as unscientific.

There have been many weekly polls in the last couple of years where the results differed from my personal viewpoint, but that was the viewpoints of the readers.

That said, here are the results from the first 36 hours of the poll:

1. Should be repealed 47 [40.87%]
2. Don’t like the law, but I do like having more smoke-free places 10 [8.7%]
3. So glad we are finally a smoke-free city! 23 [20%]
4. Great, but we need to remove exemptions so all employers are smoke-free 33 [28.7%]
5. Other: 2 [1.74%]
6. unsure/no opinion 0 [0%]

Those who want to repeal the ban make up the single biggest group, but nearly half like the law (48%).  Here were the two other answers:

1. i like it, leave smokers some places tho
2. In America, smoking cigarettes is freedom. Stop infringing on my freedom!

Ah yes freedom! The freedom to make others smell your addictive habit. The freedom to make anyplace smell like an ashtray simply from the toxins contained in your clothing. The freedom to fill the bus or light rail train car with smoke. The freedom to be completely inconsiderate of others around you.

Most likely I will never do a poll about smoking again.

– Steve Patterson