Answers and Questions
A couple of good examples in recent weeks of how different polls can get different answers on the same issue, because they asked the question in different ways.
The first is equal pay.
“The issue of income inequality between men and women has been the subject of much comment in the media recently. Do you believe that equal pay for equal work applies for men and women in your workplace?
85% agreed.
However Digipoll asked for the NZ Herald:
“Do you believe women in workplace are paid less because they are women?”
54% said yes and 36% no.
So on the surface 85% think there is equal pay for equal work yet only 36% disagree that women are paid less because they are women.
How do you reconcile it? Two significant differences. The first asked people about their actual workplace, the second asked about workplaces generally. It is quite common for people to think others will act in a bad way, even though they personally don’t experience it.
Another difference is the second question asked do women get paid less because they are women? Some who said yes might have said yes because they think women get paid less because they take take out of the workplace to be a mother. So you may answer yes to the second question but still think a workplace does equal pay for equal work.
Another example of different results is on same sex marriage. ResearchNZ asked:
“In your view, should same sex couples be allowed to marry”
60% said yes and 34% no.
A poll earlier this year by Curia (my firm) asked:
The law currently defines marriage as being only allowable between a man and a woman. Do you support this?
52% said yes and 42% no.
So 60% say they want same sex couples to marry but only 42% support changing the law to allow this, according to the two polls!
Now the difference in questions is not as great as the first example, but there is still some which partially may explain the difference. The first question does not mention the current law or a law change. It just asks whether something should be allowable.
The second question states the current law, and asks if people support the current law. It does not specifically mention same sex marriage, but the implication of the current definition is to not allow same sex marriage.
With poll questions there is rarely a clearly “right” or “wrong” question. There can be a dozen different ways to ask a question. The important thing is that the poll results make it very clear the exact question that was asked, and that reporting of the results does the same.