Critical Thinking-A Student's Introduction by Gregory Bassham

Author:Gregory Bassham
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780073407432
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Published: 2002-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Inductive Generalizations

295

CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

he might have a tendency to approach only people who look “friendly.” This

may mean that he is more inclined to approach a well-dressed businesswoman

and much less inclined to approach a disheveled man. This may introduce a

gender bias and a socioeconomic bias into the sample population, automati-

cally eliminating a signifi cant portion of the population, namely, lower-class

males. Perhaps the problem could be solved by randomly selecting the people

on the street to be approached. For example, the pollster could be given in-

structions to approach every tenth person who walks down the block. This

would certainly be a better strategy than simply allowing the pollster to ap-

proach the people he chooses on the basis of his own whims. Still, there can

be problems. For example, if you asked every tenth high school student who

walked down the street in Scarsdale, New York, if he or she was planning to

go to college, you would get some uncharacteristic results. Perhaps 90 per-

cent of the high school students in this wealthy suburb would indicate that

they were planning to go to college, whereas the national average is closer to

60 percent.

Still another factor that may affect the reliability of polls is dishonesty. We all like to give the “right answer” to a question, even when the question does

not have a right answer but is simply a matter of opinion or an attempt to collect

information. The result is that some people lie in response to anonymous polls.

For example, in response to the question, “Do you consider yourself racially

prejudiced?” we can expect more people to respond no than is actually the

case. People think that the “right answer” is no, so some will answer no even if

they do indeed consider themselves racially prejudiced. Polling agencies often

take advantage of this tendency of people to try to give the right answer by

bas07437_ch11_285-329.indd 295

11/24/09 8:38:37 AM

296

CHAPTER 11 Inductive Reasoning

asking slanted questions. That is to say, polling agencies may not be interested

in gathering objective data and so ask questions that clearly point toward one

response as the right answer. For example, depending on the answer that a

polling agency wants respondents to consider the right answer, they might

ask two very different questions. On the subject of whether the United States

should decrease the size of its nuclear arsenal, a polling agency might ask, “Are

you in favor of peaceful multilateral nuclear disarmament?” Or, alternatively,

“Are you against the weakening of the ability of the United States of America

to offer a suffi cient nuclear deterrent against foreign attack?” There is not much

need to wonder what the right answer is in each case. Polling is big business, and

those who hire polling agencies often have a vested interest in getting results

that confi rm their own position on an issue.

Another potential pitfall of objective polling is the person who is doing

the poll. Even without intending to, he or she may provide a clue as to what

the right answer is, or respondents may answer differently depending on the

pollster. A white male is much

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.