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Our sampling rigor cannot be compared to political polls, it's true. However we do weight the sample not based on guesses but on official data about the gender

by mytype 16y ago

Our sampling rigor cannot be compared to political polls, it's true. However we do weight the sample not based on guesses but on official data about the gender, age, and personality distribution in the US. We did not use geographic weights because our respondents were more or less properly distributed. Any poll can be attacked. Even political polls are subject to bias in who picks up the phone, who responds to the surveyor, etc. This bias is partially driven by personality type, which we are able to nearly eliminate through weighting by personality traits. How many polls can do that? Most polling is much less random than political polls, and yet the results are still treated as worthwhile. Some firms put up surveys on sites (site audience bias), or have carefully selected paid volunteers (bias to incorporate people who are willing to do that), etc. The fact that our results are corroborated by Forrestor and Sybase, to the extent that we can be compared, is very satisfying to me personally. Sure, we may be a few percentage points off on some things, but are the overall results invalid? No. I challenge anyone to point to any result in the study and give a reasonable explanation why that result is likely way off. The only things that are suspect to me are the major outliers, subsets like native americans for which we did not have much data. I'll give you that. Anything else? Let me know.

flatulent1 16y ago
There is an element of non-randomness in drawing from Facebook users although I'm not sure who it favors. (I'm one of the minority not being on there. I don't text people either) Looks like you did a pretty good job with this. It's a thought provoking read for sure. It occurred to me that there may be an issue with the "lust" category. It lumps those who lust for an Escalade in with those who lust for a human - very different things. I suspect that geeks feeling plenty of lust for humans may be less likely to regard it as a sin and might be less likely to respond to that choice. It's interesting that the iPad demographic seems to lean away from slender and no children (which probably includes most gays?). If I had to guess, I'd say that group leans more than average towards the Mac. It would have been interesting to see sexual orientation and OSes used/avoided or primary OS in this. I suppose it might have generated a number of emotional responses though LOL
bandushrew 16y ago
"I challenge anyone to point to any result in the study and give a reasonable explanation why that result is likely way off." plan to buy: forrester 3.8% plan to buy: you 2.0% so your results differ markedly from the forrester report itself? Your results are different (and likely differ from reality) because you did not use a random sample, you used a self selected sample of people who belong to facebook and wanted to respond to a poll. That is simply a fact. Having taken a non-random sample you then projected your own opinions into all your conclusions. Its an amusing post, but not really an interesting one.
- mytype 16y ago
  There's two explanations for that difference: 1) Forrestor's 3.8% was collected in June 2010, whereas our data was collected from March through May. Clearly the iPad is gaining momentum, as time goes on more people are planning to buy one (at least for now). 2) More importantly, Forrestor said that "no time frame was specified in the survey question". So they asked people who don't own an iPad if they intend to buy one. That's fairly different from our question, which allowed the respondent to choose from: 1) plan to buy one 2) want to play with one first 3) will wait for later versions 4) waiting for the consensus opinion Clearly, with the variety of options, some people who might have simply answered "yes" to the "intend to buy" Forrestor question would pick 2, 3 or 4 in our question. Does that settle that? And by the way, these are people who wanted to take a personality quiz, not answer a poll. Their motivation had nothing to do with the iPad, that question was randomly inserted into the personality quiz. While you seem to be "amused" by a blogger who in your mind completely makes stuff up, I'm amused by a commenter who after 5 minutes of review feels confident enough to slam a study that took multiple people dozens of hours to complete. We're not publishing this in a science journal. That's not what we're going for. It's not complete BS either though. We do normalization, we have lots of data, and our psychological measures are based on the best contemporary research. The results are worthwhile. I'll say again: I challenge anyone to point out a major flaw in our data (not my interpretation of it).
  - bandushrew 16y ago
    So, in summary, you asked different questions during a different time period and came up with different responses, but still feel happy claiming that the forrestor report somehow validates your own results? why? "these are people who wanted to take a personality quiz" that is exactly my point. what subset of iPad users want to take a personality quiz? there is a clear self-selection bias there that you are, for some reason I dont understand, entirely ignoring. "I'm amused by a commenter who after 5 minutes of review feels confident enough to slam a study that took multiple people dozens of hours to complete" mytype, Im not slamming it, its amusing, Im just pointing out the obvious. its not science you were engaged in, its opinionated blogging. Your blog post would have lost nothing if you had just skipped the dozens of hours work to implement the poll. Its not a useful poll in any sense of the word. Its a non-random poll of self-selected facebook users and gives your post about the same degree of additional validity as the personal anecdote below regarding the people I know who own iPads gives my posting. "It's not complete BS either though" in what sense of the word? from a scientific POV it is a poll from a totally non-random sample with entirely unreliable results, into which you manage to project conclusions that happen to suit you. That is not intended as a slam, it is simply a fact. If you are unhappy with that fact, you should try harder next time to use a decent user sample. or phrase things differently. Although the poll doesn't talk about iPad users as a group; not even close; it does give a clear result of what a subset of iPad owners, who belong to facebook and chose to take a personality quiz, might be intending.

by mytype 16y ago

flatulent1 16y ago

There is an element of non-randomness in drawing from Facebook users although I'm not sure who it favors. (I'm one of the minority not being on there. I don't text people either) Looks like you did a pretty good job with this. It's a thought provoking read for sure. It occurred to me that there may be an issue with the "lust" category. It lumps those who lust for an Escalade in with those who lust for a human - very different things. I suspect that geeks feeling plenty of lust for humans may be less likely to regard it as a sin and might be less likely to respond to that choice. It's interesting that the iPad demographic seems to lean away from slender and no children (which probably includes most gays?). If I had to guess, I'd say that group leans more than average towards the Mac. It would have been interesting to see sexual orientation and OSes used/avoided or primary OS in this. I suppose it might have generated a number of emotional responses though LOL

bandushrew 16y ago

"I challenge anyone to point to any result in the study and give a reasonable explanation why that result is likely way off." plan to buy: forrester 3.8% plan to buy: you 2.0% so your results differ markedly from the forrester report itself? Your results are different (and likely differ from reality) because you did not use a random sample, you used a self selected sample of people who belong to facebook and wanted to respond to a poll. That is simply a fact. Having taken a non-random sample you then projected your own opinions into all your conclusions. Its an amusing post, but not really an interesting one.

mytype 16y ago
There's two explanations for that difference: 1) Forrestor's 3.8% was collected in June 2010, whereas our data was collected from March through May. Clearly the iPad is gaining momentum, as time goes on more people are planning to buy one (at least for now). 2) More importantly, Forrestor said that "no time frame was specified in the survey question". So they asked people who don't own an iPad if they intend to buy one. That's fairly different from our question, which allowed the respondent to choose from: 1) plan to buy one 2) want to play with one first 3) will wait for later versions 4) waiting for the consensus opinion Clearly, with the variety of options, some people who might have simply answered "yes" to the "intend to buy" Forrestor question would pick 2, 3 or 4 in our question. Does that settle that? And by the way, these are people who wanted to take a personality quiz, not answer a poll. Their motivation had nothing to do with the iPad, that question was randomly inserted into the personality quiz. While you seem to be "amused" by a blogger who in your mind completely makes stuff up, I'm amused by a commenter who after 5 minutes of review feels confident enough to slam a study that took multiple people dozens of hours to complete. We're not publishing this in a science journal. That's not what we're going for. It's not complete BS either though. We do normalization, we have lots of data, and our psychological measures are based on the best contemporary research. The results are worthwhile. I'll say again: I challenge anyone to point out a major flaw in our data (not my interpretation of it).
- bandushrew 16y ago
  So, in summary, you asked different questions during a different time period and came up with different responses, but still feel happy claiming that the forrestor report somehow validates your own results? why? "these are people who wanted to take a personality quiz" that is exactly my point. what subset of iPad users want to take a personality quiz? there is a clear self-selection bias there that you are, for some reason I dont understand, entirely ignoring. "I'm amused by a commenter who after 5 minutes of review feels confident enough to slam a study that took multiple people dozens of hours to complete" mytype, Im not slamming it, its amusing, Im just pointing out the obvious. its not science you were engaged in, its opinionated blogging. Your blog post would have lost nothing if you had just skipped the dozens of hours work to implement the poll. Its not a useful poll in any sense of the word. Its a non-random poll of self-selected facebook users and gives your post about the same degree of additional validity as the personal anecdote below regarding the people I know who own iPads gives my posting. "It's not complete BS either though" in what sense of the word? from a scientific POV it is a poll from a totally non-random sample with entirely unreliable results, into which you manage to project conclusions that happen to suit you. That is not intended as a slam, it is simply a fact. If you are unhappy with that fact, you should try harder next time to use a decent user sample. or phrase things differently. Although the poll doesn't talk about iPad users as a group; not even close; it does give a clear result of what a subset of iPad owners, who belong to facebook and chose to take a personality quiz, might be intending.