Don’t let the headlines fool you
I worked myself up into a froth Tuesday morning on Facebook, letting all my friends know that a report showing up on all the major news feeds is fake. “Sizable minority says Canada is accepting too many refugees: poll,” screams The Globe and Mail; “Liberal government ‘testing the limits’ of Canadians’ attitudes to refugees: poll” shrieks The National Post; and CBC News, “1 in 4 Canadians want Trump-style travel ban, poll suggests.” As of today, that last has been shared over 14,000 times. Except that it’s false, it’s a lie, it’s fake.
That’s because the Angus Reid poll that all these headlines are shouting about is unscientific. If you want to say anything meaningful about the attitudes of “Canadians,” you have to follow the rules: either ask all Canadians the questions (which the federal government does during the census), or choose a random sample from the population of all Canadians, and ask them the questions.
Probability theory says that the bigger the sample size, the closer you’ll actually get to the real distribution of Canadian attitudes.
But the Angus Reid poll didn’t survey a large random sample of all Canadians. Rather, it surveyed 1,508 people who belong to the Angus Reid Forum, folks who have volunteered, online, to complete questionnaires sent to them from Angus Reid in return for “Survey Dollars” and a chance to win $1,000. The Angus Reid Forum is definitely not the population of all Canadians.
In fact, we don’t know anything about these people, except that they want to make a few bucks filling in surveys for a private marketing research company.
I’m not saying they’re bad people; I, myself, joined the Forum just today, and took my first survey (something about technology use). I’m just saying that their attitudes toward immigration, refugees or anything else cannot be taken as representative of “Canadians” or any other group, except perhaps of the Angus Reid Forum.
But does anyone care? All this information regarding the non-representativeness of the Angus Reid sample and survey is publicly available, and I think it should be checked by news sources before they publish provocative headlines, especially these days when we know that splashy news like this does more than just attract eyeballs and sell newspapers — it stokes racism and fosters suspicion and hate.
My Facebook friends agree, but frothing on Facebook just means I’m preaching to the choir who, in my case, is a choir made up of a bunch of outraged academics and eggheads like me.
I don’t know. I guess the best we can do is to call it out when we see it. So I have.
The Angus Reid Forum is definitely not the population of all Canadians. In fact, we don’t know anything about these people, except that they want to make a few bucks filling in surveys for a private marketing research company.
Karen Stanbridge Middle Cove