Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
'Junk science': experts cast doubt on widely cited college free speech survey
Source: The Guardian
'Junk science': experts cast doubt on widely cited college free speech survey
Survey saying 20% of US college students believe it’s appropriate to use violence against offensive speech was administered to an opt-in online panel
Lois Beckett
Friday 22 September 2017 11.00 BST
Polling experts are raising red flags about a new survey that concluded that nearly 20% of American college students believe it’s appropriate to use violence to silence offensive speech.
The eye-popping results of the survey have been widely cited in conservative media outlets, including by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and were written up by an opinion columnist for the Washington Post.
The way the survey results have been presented are “malpractice” and “junk science” and “it should never have appeared in the press”, according to Cliff Zukin, a past president of the American Association of Public Opinion Polling, which sets ethical and transparency standards for polling.
John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California Los Angeles, defended his survey as an important window into what he had called a troubling atmosphere on American campuses in which “freedom of expression is deeply imperiled”. Villasenor, a cybersecurity expert, said this was the first public opinion survey he had conducted.
However, his survey was not administered to a randomly selected group of college students nationwide, what statisticians call a “probability sample”. Instead, it was administered to an opt-in online panel of people who self-identified as current college students.
-snip-
Survey saying 20% of US college students believe it’s appropriate to use violence against offensive speech was administered to an opt-in online panel
Lois Beckett
Friday 22 September 2017 11.00 BST
Polling experts are raising red flags about a new survey that concluded that nearly 20% of American college students believe it’s appropriate to use violence to silence offensive speech.
The eye-popping results of the survey have been widely cited in conservative media outlets, including by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and were written up by an opinion columnist for the Washington Post.
The way the survey results have been presented are “malpractice” and “junk science” and “it should never have appeared in the press”, according to Cliff Zukin, a past president of the American Association of Public Opinion Polling, which sets ethical and transparency standards for polling.
John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California Los Angeles, defended his survey as an important window into what he had called a troubling atmosphere on American campuses in which “freedom of expression is deeply imperiled”. Villasenor, a cybersecurity expert, said this was the first public opinion survey he had conducted.
However, his survey was not administered to a randomly selected group of college students nationwide, what statisticians call a “probability sample”. Instead, it was administered to an opt-in online panel of people who self-identified as current college students.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/college-free-speech-violence-survey-junk-science
2 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
