It’s no secret that the accuracy of public opinion polls has suffered in recent years as more and more people refuse to participate.
While that may make for some sleepless nights at various campaign headquarters, there’s another universe of polls that is also suffering a long-term decline in response rates: polls that inform government policy, things like unemployment rates, inflation and many, many more. As Bloomberg notes, declining response rates for polls like these could have real consequences:
“The problem with the economic statistics is, we’re interested in magnitudes from very skewed distributions,” says Robert Groves, a former Census Bureau director and prominent survey expert. “And if you miss the big guys, you’re in trouble.” To expand on that point, he adds: “Imagine estimating retail sales if Walmart or Amazon refuses to provide their data versus the flower shop on 14th Avenue.”
Williams describes a “vicious circle” that emerges when trying to boost response rates for something like the Current Population Survey, which informs statistics such as the unemployment rate.
One way to correct for the loss of survey responses is to increase the amount of data from other private sources:
The closely watched consumer price index, which relies in part on price data collected in person, also incorporates information from J.D. Power Information Network to measure changes in the prices of used cars and trucks.
It’s an information band-aid that, eventually, will cease to be either useful or practical. What’s a data-hungry federal government to do? There’s always the Census route – making responses mandatory. Good luck with that.
Budgets could increase, allowing for more in-person follow-up. That’s probably unlikely, too. Is this a place for AI and machine learning to step up and do something useful (besides having creepy online chats with humans?). Possibly. But an answer is needed and soon. To some degree, everything in the global economy depends upon the survey data the federal government collects. We simply can’t afford to have that data go bad.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Since pollsters are probably not too far removed from the cheer-leading, lying, half-truth, dishonest, lame-stream, fake-news, Democrat-government media scum, why in the heck would anybody in their right mind seriously care about giving their honest opinion to any pesky poll-takers?
I know I sure don’t.
Seems to me that people like to be on the winning side of things. They like to follow the herd a lot so when a poll is skewed for some reason. It tends to drag a lot of these follower types with it. That could never happen could it? Polls try to take advantage of this and drag followers along with them by giving unreliable “facts” to put out on the news and social media where certain “facts” become gospel and cannot be disputed or argued against.
I don’t trust but few polls anymore. They’re too easily twisted with the wording for one and two, many only got to those who go along with them..
Please point out which part of the consequences is unforeseen.