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The problem with this poll is that it has a strong bias built into it. Those with recent ancestors who immigrated (such as parents or grandparents) will be able

The problem with this poll is that it has a strong bias built into it. Those with recent ancestors who immigrated (such as parents or grandparents) will be able to answer this question fairly easily. Those who do not will find this question difficult to answer unless they have good records of their family tree. I'm not aware of any immigrants in my family tree, but I'm only aware of my ancestry two generations back, so I can't answer the poll accurately without additional research. It isn't really worth my time to do that, so I'm not going to answer the poll. Assuming I'm not a rare exception, the way your poll is worded will therefore be biased toward recent immigrants and people who know a lot about their family tree. Without knowing how much this bias is, there's not a whole lot you can conclude from the results. You may want to setup an additional poll, such as: * I am an immigrant * At least one of my parents was an immigrant * At least one of my grandparents was an immigrant My guess is that more people could answer that poll than your current one, and you'd therefore get less bias.

jballanc 15y ago
Certainly if I wanted to be more scientific about this, there is a lot I would do differently... That said, if you go through history, there has seldom been a time when one location or one state remained the dominant force in the world for more than 3 or 4 generations (especially looking at more recent world history). So, another way of posing the hypothesis might be: Is there a "migrant" sub-population within the human species that is both willing to travel to wherever opportunities are to be found and, at the same time, increase the prosperity of those locations when they arrive?
- weavejester 15y ago
  It's a reasonable hypothesis, I'm just doubtful that the poll, worded as it is, counts as evidence of this. Another hypothesis is that people know more about their parents and grand-parents than they do about their more distant ancestors, and that people are more likely to answer polls that are easy to answer than polls that are hard to answer. This hypothesis would also explain the results we're seeing in the poll.
- arunbahl 15y ago
  If that's the case, it could be that a "substantial move" indicative of this migrant opportunity-seeking mentality doesn't require immigration or the crossing of nation-state boundaries at all. I wonder if there's another way to phrase this to include someone uprooting themselves from the American east coast and moving to California, for example. Similarly there are parts of the world where crossing a border to live is nearly as easy (e.g. within the EU). What's the barrier you're trying to measure? Leaving familiar people/surroundings? [Edit - added EU example and question]
- arethuza 15y ago
  Given that it is fairly easy to identify those "dominant forces" you should check whether there were any significant amounts of immigration to those places before they achieved top-dog status. By my estimate I can see only one country that has had mass immigration and then which achieved dominant world power status fairly soon afterwards: the United States. Are these connected, probably, are they connected because the immigrants were made up of a tribe of wandering genetic entrepreneurs moving onto their next conquest, I suspect not.

jballanc 15y ago

Certainly if I wanted to be more scientific about this, there is a lot I would do differently... That said, if you go through history, there has seldom been a time when one location or one state remained the dominant force in the world for more than 3 or 4 generations (especially looking at more recent world history). So, another way of posing the hypothesis might be: Is there a "migrant" sub-population within the human species that is both willing to travel to wherever opportunities are to be found and, at the same time, increase the prosperity of those locations when they arrive?

weavejester 15y ago
It's a reasonable hypothesis, I'm just doubtful that the poll, worded as it is, counts as evidence of this. Another hypothesis is that people know more about their parents and grand-parents than they do about their more distant ancestors, and that people are more likely to answer polls that are easy to answer than polls that are hard to answer. This hypothesis would also explain the results we're seeing in the poll.
arunbahl 15y ago
If that's the case, it could be that a "substantial move" indicative of this migrant opportunity-seeking mentality doesn't require immigration or the crossing of nation-state boundaries at all. I wonder if there's another way to phrase this to include someone uprooting themselves from the American east coast and moving to California, for example. Similarly there are parts of the world where crossing a border to live is nearly as easy (e.g. within the EU). What's the barrier you're trying to measure? Leaving familiar people/surroundings? [Edit - added EU example and question]
arethuza 15y ago
Given that it is fairly easy to identify those "dominant forces" you should check whether there were any significant amounts of immigration to those places before they achieved top-dog status. By my estimate I can see only one country that has had mass immigration and then which achieved dominant world power status fairly soon afterwards: the United States. Are these connected, probably, are they connected because the immigrants were made up of a tribe of wandering genetic entrepreneurs moving onto their next conquest, I suspect not.