{"id":658,"date":"2010-07-29T21:49:43","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T19:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/?p=658"},"modified":"2010-07-29T22:42:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T20:42:05","slug":"ipad-opinion-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/ipad-opinion-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seven Deadly Sins of Conducting a Survey Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stumbled upon this “survey analysis<\/a>” on an Apple related list called “iPad Opinion Profile – iPad Personality Clash: Elites vs. Geeks”. The brief summary<\/a> of this survey suggests that iPad owners are “Selfish Elites” and those who oppose the iPad are “Independent Geeks”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It takes a bit to get an idea of what these guys did, but here is my list of the seven deadly sins of conducting a survey:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. don’t care about being representative, just ask some guys on, say facebook<\/strong>
    \n(the survey actually started before the iPad was released …)<\/li>\n
  2. normalize the data – somehow<\/strong>
    \n(it says: “The survey sample was normalized to match the gender, age and personality distribution of 13-49 year olds living in the United States”), good luck!<\/li>\n
  3. only pick a tiny fraction of the data to make things more interesting<\/strong>
    \n(the “study” only looks at 9% of the survey data and mixes owners of an iPad with those who intend to buy one …)<\/li>\n
  4. ask a lot of unrelated questions<\/strong>
    \n(the question for “    The Biggest Sin<\/a>” is really something that haunts us, especially when thinking about touch devices)<\/li>\n
  5. never ever show the questions you actually asked <\/strong>
    \n(no sample questionnaire is supplied)<\/li>\n
  6. don’t mention the absolute numbers behind the results, only use ratios, which really go haywire for small numbers; compare to the undefined “average person”<\/strong>
    \n(no quantities at all, only the overall size of 20,000)<\/li>\n
  7. only pick the findings that make a good headline and match your insinuation – never point to contradicting results<\/strong>
    \n(according to the study, iPad owners are strongest for     families with many children<\/a>, but are referred to being “not very kind or altruistic” – great)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Although I am neither an iPad owner, nor intend to buy one anytime soon (though donations<\/a> are welcome ;-)), my verdict from the results of the study<\/a> are, that iPad critics are “low stimulated, introverted, reserved, insecure, neurotic young males, tending to be aggressive and lazy, mainly found in Hawaii and Alaska”.<\/p>\n

    – sometimes I feel guilty being a statistician<\/p>\n

    \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I stumbled upon this “survey analysis” on an Apple related list called “iPad Opinion Profile – iPad Personality Clash: Elites vs. Geeks”. The brief summary of this survey suggests that iPad owners are “Selfish Elites” and those who oppose the iPad are “Independent Geeks”. It takes a bit to get an idea of what these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theusrus.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}