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I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" What does that mean exactly? Or more importantly, what does it mean to the respondents? >

I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" What does that mean exactly? Or more importantly, what does it mean to the respondents? > "Do you expect Google to collect data about a person’s locations when a person is not using a Google platform or app?" I have a feeling many people read that as "Do you want Google...." Saying "Do you expect" feels like a cynical "Do you think Google will do something you don't want them to do but are helpless to prevent, because they are a huge, uncaring, profit-obsessed corporation?" in which case, all questions can be answered "Yes" regardless of topic because the underlying cause is the same to the respondent. "Are you aware that Google does X" might be a less loaded way to ask these.

hopler 8y ago
"expect" is a technical term, as in bug reports where you wrote Observed Behavior and Expected Behavior. It is confusing/misleading for survey respondents, though.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  Expect is a technical term in the context of computers, not humans.
- lucasmullens 8y ago
  Something isn't a technical term for having a technical use-case. Expectations existed long before technology.
- kortilla 8y ago
  “I expect you to arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure.” Doesn’t sound technical to me.
jonfw 8y ago
I think asking "are you aware" is a different question. Most non-tech people have barely done any research on this and probably have never even looked into it. You're sharing information and asking questions about it at the same time. Sort of a cross-contamination IMO.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Such cross-contamination, when done maliciously, is called "push-polling" and is a known tactic for shaping political discourse by taking advantage of being possibly the first to mention a topic in a person's field-of-view to paint that topic in the worst possible light. I don't think that's what's being done here, but it's interesting to note that what you're seeing is definitely an issue regarding polls in general.
  - mandevil 8y ago
    Quite honestly, most things that receivers call "push polls" are not push polls. They are honest attempts to figure out which lines of attack will resonate better with the public at large. So you try several different attacks on a relatively small sample, see what makes people respond most strongly, and then scale up the attacks with paid media, speeches etc. Yes, most of these will have to inform people of the bad stuff you are going to be attacking over, but that's because if the general public was widely aware of the attack, you wouldn't need to mention it- or at least not to pay pollsters to figure out if it is a good attack. The hallmarks of a push poll are that it makes no attempt to gauge your response level, and that it tries to call far more people than a statistical survey would need to do. The most famous case, in recent US history, would have to be "John McCain's illegitimate Black baby" (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411)
    - dahart 8y ago
      Interesting use of the word "honest". If there's any agenda being pushed during a survey at all, then it's not an honest survey, statistically speaking. An honest attempt to figure out a line of attack isn't an honest poll. So, any "survey" that is trying to sway or push opinions at all is a push poll in my book, even if they're also collecting information & using the information collected. You're trying to draw the line at one extreme, all push and no poll, but I believe the term "push poll" has long been used by many people for surveys that do both. Since you can't influence the thing you're sampling and get an accurate sample at the same time, don't you think the line actually needs to be at 100% poll and 0% push, rather than requiring 0% polling before you can call it a push poll?
wslh 8y ago
> I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" This is oriented to general to general users but as a G Suite customer you don't expect your business e-mails are used as input for machine learning since you are paying for the product.
oldjokes 8y ago
We're sort of making up this whole online spaces thing as we go. Whether you love them or hate them, the decisions Google made are arbitrary and were done behind closed doors by a very small number of people. Framing the question as "do you expect the online space to be like X" seems much more natural to me than "Google has already decided X", because the latter is likely to lead to far different answers. If we lead the question by defining it with the status quo, then naturally that's the default most people will want to agree with.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  I don't think that enough people are aware of the fact that even when their data is anonymized and neither google nor its customers can extract an individual's identity, that that STILL represents serious problems. We (the public) just don't have the vocabulary and historical experience to draw from that gives us enough perspective. There really was only one super high-profile instance of what this actually means with Cambridge Analytical and Facebook. Even that, however, is brushed off by many people. There will have to be more examples of things going horribly wrong before people wise up and are able to understand and think through the implications of surveillance capitalism. It's all just too abstract right now, I expect that will change in the not-too-distant future.
  - ronnier 8y ago
    How did Cambridge Analytical impact people? People didn’t feel the pain so they do not care. Pain was felt in the Ashley Maddison leak — Google and Facebook has a lot more info than AM ever did, if it’s ever leaked it will be world ending for many.
    - xtian 8y ago
      Cambridge Analytica arguably had a major impact on the trajectory of the American political system. I’m sure you can come up with some people feeling real pain as a result if you think about it a little.
BoorishBears 8y ago
I’d go with “Does it surprise you...”
- vitro 8y ago
  Doesn't ot still carry the information that they do it? If you ask "Do you expect.." this question is neutral and you do not know if they do it or not.
  - lkbm 8y ago
    "Would you be surprised if"? "Do you expect" is neutral except it has an additional normative meaning. "I expect you to do X" doesn't just mean "I predict that you will do X". It can also mean "This is the thing you're supposed to do", even if I predict that you'll fail to do it. This is common at least in American english. "Do you expect Google to do X" doesn't explicitly state which sense it's intended, and that can result in people saying "no", meaning no in the former sense, despite thinking yes in the latter sense.
- theseatoms 8y ago
  At that point the pollsters may as well conduct a public service announcement. "Be aware that Google tracks and stores basically everything that they can. By the way, did you know this?"
aljones 8y ago
How big of an effect do you think this had? Most people didn't answer yes.
dwighttk 8y ago
if every question begins "Are you aware..." then it sounds like Google is doing all those things, so people may start to change their answers because they don't want to appear they aren't knowledgeable. By saying "Do you expect..." it's possible that some of the things are things Google is doing and some aren't so you can't just change all your answers to yes to appear knowledgable.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  How about "Do you think Google does X?"
- FiddlyPack 8y ago
  I might answer “do you think Google does X” with ‘yes’ because I believe they do, and “do you expect Google to do X” with ‘no’ because I do not believe it would be right to do so. “Expect of” is often used to connote a kind of standard setting. I expect power multinational companies to behave ethically to the best of their ability. I believe they behave ethically only to the degree that it allows them the political leeway to behave without scrutiny.
rangersanger 8y ago
Asking someone if they are aware of something introduces its own set of biases, eg observer bias. Do you expect is more neutral as the respondent is not "clued in" to the "right" answer through the question. The cynicism you describe would only be felt if the respondent is aware that tracking is status quo, and thinks that it's problematic. In which case, you'd get the same answer.
- FiddlyPack 8y ago
  There is behavior that I expect of a 14 year old, even if they seldom exhibit that behavior.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
skybrian 8y ago
You could ask straight out, "Does Google do X?" The other problem is that there is are only two choices. They left out "I don't know". This means people who don't know probably picked more or less at random.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  you would need “I don't know” if you changed the questions to your format, but you don't need them with "do you expect" which should default to no.
mirimir 8y ago
I read "expect" in the sense of "Do you expect vehicle drivers to hit you, when you're crossing the road?" It's basically a question about what you believe is moral. "Are you aware..." is totally different.

hopler 8y ago

"expect" is a technical term, as in bug reports where you wrote Observed Behavior and Expected Behavior. It is confusing/misleading for survey respondents, though.

ucaetano 8y ago
Expect is a technical term in the context of computers, not humans.
lucasmullens 8y ago
Something isn't a technical term for having a technical use-case. Expectations existed long before technology.
kortilla 8y ago
“I expect you to arrive at the airport 2 hours before departure.” Doesn’t sound technical to me.

jonfw 8y ago

I think asking "are you aware" is a different question. Most non-tech people have barely done any research on this and probably have never even looked into it. You're sharing information and asking questions about it at the same time. Sort of a cross-contamination IMO.

fixermark 8y ago
Such cross-contamination, when done maliciously, is called "push-polling" and is a known tactic for shaping political discourse by taking advantage of being possibly the first to mention a topic in a person's field-of-view to paint that topic in the worst possible light. I don't think that's what's being done here, but it's interesting to note that what you're seeing is definitely an issue regarding polls in general.
- mandevil 8y ago
  Quite honestly, most things that receivers call "push polls" are not push polls. They are honest attempts to figure out which lines of attack will resonate better with the public at large. So you try several different attacks on a relatively small sample, see what makes people respond most strongly, and then scale up the attacks with paid media, speeches etc. Yes, most of these will have to inform people of the bad stuff you are going to be attacking over, but that's because if the general public was widely aware of the attack, you wouldn't need to mention it- or at least not to pay pollsters to figure out if it is a good attack. The hallmarks of a push poll are that it makes no attempt to gauge your response level, and that it tries to call far more people than a statistical survey would need to do. The most famous case, in recent US history, would have to be "John McCain's illegitimate Black baby" (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411)
  - dahart 8y ago
    Interesting use of the word "honest". If there's any agenda being pushed during a survey at all, then it's not an honest survey, statistically speaking. An honest attempt to figure out a line of attack isn't an honest poll. So, any "survey" that is trying to sway or push opinions at all is a push poll in my book, even if they're also collecting information & using the information collected. You're trying to draw the line at one extreme, all push and no poll, but I believe the term "push poll" has long been used by many people for surveys that do both. Since you can't influence the thing you're sampling and get an accurate sample at the same time, don't you think the line actually needs to be at 100% poll and 0% push, rather than requiring 0% polling before you can call it a push poll?

wslh 8y ago

> I have a really hard time grokking their lead-in "Do you expect...?" This is oriented to general to general users but as a G Suite customer you don't expect your business e-mails are used as input for machine learning since you are paying for the product.

oldjokes 8y ago

We're sort of making up this whole online spaces thing as we go. Whether you love them or hate them, the decisions Google made are arbitrary and were done behind closed doors by a very small number of people. Framing the question as "do you expect the online space to be like X" seems much more natural to me than "Google has already decided X", because the latter is likely to lead to far different answers. If we lead the question by defining it with the status quo, then naturally that's the default most people will want to agree with.

crispyambulance 8y ago
I don't think that enough people are aware of the fact that even when their data is anonymized and neither google nor its customers can extract an individual's identity, that that STILL represents serious problems. We (the public) just don't have the vocabulary and historical experience to draw from that gives us enough perspective. There really was only one super high-profile instance of what this actually means with Cambridge Analytical and Facebook. Even that, however, is brushed off by many people. There will have to be more examples of things going horribly wrong before people wise up and are able to understand and think through the implications of surveillance capitalism. It's all just too abstract right now, I expect that will change in the not-too-distant future.
- ronnier 8y ago
  How did Cambridge Analytical impact people? People didn’t feel the pain so they do not care. Pain was felt in the Ashley Maddison leak — Google and Facebook has a lot more info than AM ever did, if it’s ever leaked it will be world ending for many.
  - xtian 8y ago
    Cambridge Analytica arguably had a major impact on the trajectory of the American political system. I’m sure you can come up with some people feeling real pain as a result if you think about it a little.

BoorishBears 8y ago

I’d go with “Does it surprise you...”

vitro 8y ago
Doesn't ot still carry the information that they do it? If you ask "Do you expect.." this question is neutral and you do not know if they do it or not.
- lkbm 8y ago
  "Would you be surprised if"? "Do you expect" is neutral except it has an additional normative meaning. "I expect you to do X" doesn't just mean "I predict that you will do X". It can also mean "This is the thing you're supposed to do", even if I predict that you'll fail to do it. This is common at least in American english. "Do you expect Google to do X" doesn't explicitly state which sense it's intended, and that can result in people saying "no", meaning no in the former sense, despite thinking yes in the latter sense.
theseatoms 8y ago
At that point the pollsters may as well conduct a public service announcement. "Be aware that Google tracks and stores basically everything that they can. By the way, did you know this?"

aljones 8y ago

How big of an effect do you think this had? Most people didn't answer yes.

dwighttk 8y ago

if every question begins "Are you aware..." then it sounds like Google is doing all those things, so people may start to change their answers because they don't want to appear they aren't knowledgeable. By saying "Do you expect..." it's possible that some of the things are things Google is doing and some aren't so you can't just change all your answers to yes to appear knowledgable.

mehrdadn 8y ago
How about "Do you think Google does X?"
FiddlyPack 8y ago
I might answer “do you think Google does X” with ‘yes’ because I believe they do, and “do you expect Google to do X” with ‘no’ because I do not believe it would be right to do so. “Expect of” is often used to connote a kind of standard setting. I expect power multinational companies to behave ethically to the best of their ability. I believe they behave ethically only to the degree that it allows them the political leeway to behave without scrutiny.

rangersanger 8y ago

Asking someone if they are aware of something introduces its own set of biases, eg observer bias. Do you expect is more neutral as the respondent is not "clued in" to the "right" answer through the question. The cynicism you describe would only be felt if the respondent is aware that tracking is status quo, and thinks that it's problematic. In which case, you'd get the same answer.

FiddlyPack 8y ago
There is behavior that I expect of a 14 year old, even if they seldom exhibit that behavior.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

skybrian 8y ago

You could ask straight out, "Does Google do X?" The other problem is that there is are only two choices. They left out "I don't know". This means people who don't know probably picked more or less at random.

dwighttk 8y ago
you would need “I don't know” if you changed the questions to your format, but you don't need them with "do you expect" which should default to no.

mirimir 8y ago

I read "expect" in the sense of "Do you expect vehicle drivers to hit you, when you're crossing the road?" It's basically a question about what you believe is moral. "Are you aware..." is totally different.