You could just guess
Q: Newshub says they know the demographic that’s worst at social distancing
A: Presidents? Elderly real-estate developers? Americans?
Q: The headline doesn’t say
A: Well, of course not. Then you might not click. It’s men, and young people
Q: So, the majority of the population is the worst?
A: Have you been in a supermarket lately?
Q: Fair point. How did they tell who was good and bad at social distancing? Did they use hidden cameras and AI video processing?
A: They asked them
Q: So men and younger people just say they are the worst.
A: Yes, basically.
Q: And this was in Canada and the United States?
A: No, the researchers were in Canada and the United States. The participants were from around the world.
Q: How around?
Q: Well, about 700 from Canada, nearly 200 from UK, 72 from Serbia, 61 from USA, 39 from Malta, 4 from Luxembourg, 1 from Brazil, and … you’re looking impatient
A: How about New Zealand?
Q: None
A: How did they do the sampling?
Q: The research paper says “This cross-sectional study was conducted online with a convenience sample of English-speaking adults”
A: Like — Twitter polls or something?
Q: “The survey was hosted on the Qualtrics platform and was distributed via snowball convenience sampling through co-author’s professional and personal networks and social media accounts (e.g., Twitter, Facebook); ads posted on University of Calgary online platforms; via paid ads (35.00 CAD/day) posted on Facebook targeting English-speaking adults residing in North America and Europe.”
Q: “Snowball convenience sampling”?
A: Translates as “Please retweet for reach”
A: That… sounds like the sort of thing you usually call a bogus poll.
Q: It does, doesn’t it.
A: But it seems to be getting the right answer
Q: If you can tell that, you didn’t need the survey.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Heres another one about a polling booth in Northcote which ‘predicts’ the party vote …
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/08-10-2020/booth-of-truth-new-zealands-bellwether-voters/
It seems that RNZ went all on for their analysis..maybe Spinoff ‘reused’ their research.
“Accuracy of polling booths was based on how much the party vote for each party that won a seat in Parliament deviated from the nationwide vote each election. RNZ selected the top 100 most accurate booths at the 2011, 2014, and 2017 elections and calculated their average (mean) ranking, keeping only those booths with an average rank of 50 or better (to account for one slightly ‘off’ year in an otherwise highly accurate run). This left eight booths, with only Birkenhead Baptist Church also appearing in the top 100 booths in 2008 (ranked 7th). ”
Never knew until now that a prediction counted even when it came after all the votes were cast. It really was a hindcast, but that would spoil the headline
4 years ago