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2004-03-16 Iraq-Jordan

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Posted by ed 2004-03-16 08:32|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 The poll, as with all other polls taken in Iraq, is largely meaningless -- classic Western - Arab disconnect.

In the West, when we laughingly say, "Well, you'll never make old John happy - cuz then he'd have nothing to bitch about!" we are just on the cusp of "getting it" regards inherent contradictions in polling numbers -- of a Western poll... we have learned how to phrase questions to better elicit truth, but we know we don't get absolute truth - and that's only valid for the culture you know as a member.

Arab culture has several hugely different paradigms and I would suggest there is no useful Western-style polling system which overcomes the differences. There have been band-aids applied, such as the "liberated" versus "humiliated" - when's the last time a pollster offered YOU that option? Heh, but that's about as far as they've gotten. We accept the differences with Asian cultures and some of us have an inkling of "face" issues. The same problem exists with Arab culture - your Western Poll is poorly suited to elicit factual information. To cover the problem sufficiently, you'd need to read and absorb several books - but that wouldn't exactly tell you how to get truthful answers which match up with the pollster's pre-digested polarized categories. It just doesn't work that way.

To have any hope of accuracy, you would have to register the subject's response range in the same manner as a lie detector examiner - custom to each person, custom for the setting of the test, custom for the examiner-subject comfort level, etc. We can safely assume ABC didn't pay enough for the poll to have such controls in place. And we can also assume ABC influenced the results by the manner in which the poll was ordered, who was hired, and other factors that we Westerners CAN comprehend. "Editorial agenda" is now common in the lexicon - and for good reason.

The cultural disconnect prevents getting anything meaningful in Western terms. Period. Full stop.

Posted by .com 2004-3-16 9:42:20 AM|| 2004-3-16 9:42:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 And they have a 2% error margin! That's better than we get in U. S. surverys, never below 3%.

Posted by Mr. Davis 2004-3-16 10:54:50 AM|| 2004-3-16 10:54:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 To have any hope of accuracy, you would have to register the subject's response range in the same manner as a lie detector examiner

Arabic=Analog

Posted by Shipman 2004-3-16 10:59:43 AM|| 2004-3-16 10:59:43 AM|| Front Page Top

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