• Fleur_@aussie.zone
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    1 hour ago

    Resolve is a polling agency conducted by the Sydney morning herald. Their polls supposedly ask “questions that differ between print and online versions,” as well as “mislead readers” and have “limited utility.” They seem to have a habit of asking questions in a way that prompts certain answers and often misrepresented data in their articles. I wouldn’t consider them particularly valuable as a source.

    https://insidestory.org.au/the-resolve-poll-that-resolves-very-little/

    I do think that there is a significant portion of the Australian population fed up with the protests. Anecdotally I’ve heard complaints about specifically the Palestine protests from people I interact with though it mostly amounts to “why are they still doing it and interrupting my day to day, I feel it is pointless and annoying,” as opposed to wanting them outright banned.

  • tau@aussie.zone
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    2 hours ago

    Hope this puts into perspective the widely spruiked majority support for tighter gun laws that was used to help ram through changes in NSW.

    • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zone
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      14 hours ago

      Yep, thats not a bad number to get for a poll.

      I’m probably more worried about the speed in which they’ve put this together. So close to the event which they readily admit has made the results deviate from a normal results, which is the whole intention behind putting this out now. They can then assess the drop off in support as the event gets further back in time, and intervening events have their effect.

      But the speed is also a concern because they’ve had to do this over the xmas period, when a lot more people are less available. So i have a concern about how representative they were able to make it. I’m sure they tried, resolve has a reasonable reputation for polling, but given the time period for responses it isn’t ideal.

      • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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        4 hours ago

        Is it not like 0.005 percent of the population assuming we have 20million?

        That seems almost nothing to say a majority

        • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zone
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          2 hours ago

          If they can get a representative sample then 1000 to 2000 is pretty good, and somewhat industry standard. Using statistical analyses on larger samples will only marginally improve quality of results. A key trick is to gain a representative enough sample, and 1000 to 2000 people tends to be enough to cover most segments/divisions of a population that are useful.


          I’ve been reading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov recently and its incredible how well he explained the predictability of large groups of humans. Modern statisticians are mostly a humble lot, having all been proved wrong many a time, but they all know that we can be fairly predictable on a population level. Listen to or read Nate Silver, Ben Raue, or Antony Green probably some of the most well known in our context of “Australians influenced heavily by US politics” all know they know things, but are fairly humble in their pronouncements about things, contrast this with lifestyle podcasters or most journalists and you’ll see what I mean.


          To put another way, a lot of statistical analysis is built off averaging and predicting those measures of central tendencies, which after a certain size is reached vary little with more size, so once you reach a fair size sample the most important, and increasingly tricky part is finding its representative. I think a famous story of this is the readers digest polls who were famously highly reliable, until circulation or readership decreased and suddenly the reliability plummeted.

  • ziltoid101@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Not super familiar with Resolve polls but I do find this pretty difficult to believe, that only 16% of the country would OPPOSE a ban on Palestine protests. Would definitely need to see similar polling independently reproduced to take it seriously.

    That said, I’d wager a non-trivial chunk of the country is apathetic and would be against all protests, full stop.

  • Solemarc@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Didn’t we literally just get done with massive marches for Palestine in every capital city? I don’t think that many people changed their mind…

    • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      That explains a lot.

      If they had added “ban Jack Russel Terriers” in that list, some percentage of people polled would have said “sure yea that too”.

      • Nath@aussie.zone
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        14 hours ago

        I have no idea who they polled, but I have grave doubts that it was a fair sample of the population.

        I’d also love to hear how the questions were phased. For example, I do think the Holocaust should be taught in schools. But the infographic words this like it should be a subject or something.

        I think the Holodomor should also be taught in schools, and if it was, I must have been chatting to a mate that one moment or something. While the Holocaust had loads of attention by comparison.