Flawed poll distorts scope of sexual abuse

[amhara]

Results hardly ‘shocking’ when you look at how the questions were framed

A week ago, an Ipsos-Reid poll was released, informing the nation that more than two million Canadians have family members, friends, or acquaintances who have been sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest. The finding was described by the polling company as “astonishing” and “shocking.” The senior vice-president of Ipsos, John Wright, told a Global National television audience the day of the release, “If we were experiencing H1N1 tomorrow with two million people, we would in fact shut down this country, because it would be a calamity. We’re dealing with what appears to be an epidemic.”

Another excerpt:

The first question asks individuals about the people they know – and who doesn’t know someone who has been divorced? The other asks individuals about their own experiences. Awareness does not equal incidence. Both are important. But obviously they are two very different things.

And another excerpt:

Take teenage suicide as another example. If one is to equate awareness with an epidemic, here’s a major one: our latest national youth survey has found that about one in three teenagers has a close friend who has attempted suicide. Does that mean that one in three – or as many as one million Canadian teens – have tried to take their lives? Of course not. In one school of 1,000 students, for example, teenagers may have two or three people in mind – very serious, of course, but hardly an epidemic.

Ipsos-Reid probed awareness, not incidence. One person in a neighbourhood or larger community could have been assaulted – and hundreds and maybe thousands of people would be aware of it. No time frame was given, meaning awareness of an incident could span up to 80 or 90 years – not just the post-1950s, for example. In short, the reporting net was an extremely large one.

Here is the link of the full article in the Edmonton Journal:
edmontonjournal.com/news/Flawed+poll+distorts+scope+sexual+abuse/2932895/story.html

 

[kms48045]

Thank you for sharing the article.
It was well written and states the obvious flaws with so many “polls” these days

 

[Soutane]

Perhaps Zatzat will visit and eat a little crow as she was the one who trumpeted this poll in the first place.This is an opportunity for her to demonstrate her detachment,credibility and fairness.

 

[amhara]

Perhaps Zatzat will visit and eat a little crow as she was the one who trumpeted this poll in the first place.This is an opportunity for her to demonstrate her detachment,credibility and fairness.

What does ‘eat a little crow’ mean? lol

 

[Soutane]

What does ‘eat a little crow’ mean? lol

What is the origin of “eat crow” or “eating crow,” and exactly what does it mean?
To eat crow means ‘to suffer humiliation’, and specifically ‘to be forced to admit to having made an error, as by retracting an emphatic statement’. An example from the mystery writer “Ellery Queen” in 1930: “I should merely be making an *** of myself if I accused someone and then had to eat crow.”

Crows are notoriously disagreeable birds, in every respect. Scavengers, they are not suitable for eating. An old joke among outdoorsmen holds that if you get lost in the woods without any food and manage to catch a crow, you should put it in a pot with one of your boots, boil it for a week, and then eat the boot. Eating crow, therefore, is an especially unpleasant and humiliating thing to have to do.

The expression to eat crow is surprisingly recent. It is originally and still chiefly an Americanism, first found in the mid nineteenth century. The original form was to eat boiled crow.