Was anyone else bummed there was no congratulations or certificate at the end of the 2.5 hour online course?

Question on Education: Worst in the Debate?

When watching the second debate last night I was surprised to see the first question was about education.  A 20 year old college student named Jeremy asked the President and Governor what they can say to reassure him and his parents that he will be able to sufficiently support himself after graduation.  Now, this may have been the most poorly answered question in the entire debate (or maybe just for me since I am interested in education).  Governor Romeny was the first to answer and all he did was boast abou the Abigail Adams Scholarship awarded to students in Mass., knock on Obama for crushing the middle class, and say he wanted to extend Pell Grants and some other worthless fillers.  Oh, and of course, he said that when he is president he will bring good jobs back into the economy, but that was it.  Not how, not what kind of jobs or anything, just good jobs back in the economy. 
President Obama's answer may have been even worse.  He said he he is glad that Jeremy is valuing higher education and that he wants to build on the 5 million jobs he has already created in the private sector.  Then he said he wants more manufacturing jobs for college grads (which was the most disheartening for me).  And then he basically used the rest of the time to give a brief overview of his plan to fix the economy and yadda yadda yadda.
SO, not only did neither of them really asnwer the question, President Obama implied he wants college graduates to work manufacturing jobs! So now my college degree will get me a job in a factory and allow me to join a union! Whoo Hoo! At least Romney said he wants to bring back good jobs to the economy.
Anyway, education sucks, debates suck, Jeremy sucks.

Egypt Not Taking Too Kindly to U.S.

Going back to the Gallup website's Opinion Briefing's section, I looked at the article about U.S. aid in Egypt. Recently, the United States has not a very good reputation in the middle east and as we move towards Africa, it looks like they dont want us there. The very first poll was regarding whether or not Egyptians wanted U.S. economic aid. 82% of the Egyptian people appose any economic aid from the U.S. 83% are in agreement in thinking that the U.S. wont let them form their own political system and will instead impose their own. We are really not making a good name for ourselves, especially as expansive as U.S. foreign policy is.

However, it seems we arent the only bad fish in this pond. China and Iran are no better in Egyptian eyes than the U.S. is. Over the past 7 years, the survey has asked the Egyptian people on the leadership of the U.S., China, and Iran. For now, it seems we are the best of the worse, but that may not be the case in the future. China has slowly been increasing in Egyptian approval over the past seven years. Could they be the occupying power the country wants?

From a polling perspective, everything in the survey method seemed pretty standard until I read the line that read, "Results are based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older per wave..." I thought that was really interesting. Those considered adults were age 15 and up. Hypothetically, if Gallup were to do a poll of the entire adult world (big dreams, I know, but bear with me) would they have to set a certain age for the entire poll or would each countries definition of "adult" be the standard for the poll? Interesting question that I dont really know the answer to. WAF.

This is a great representation of the two candidates on their view of public spending, although I am worried for our nation if we have finally descended into a social policy of simply taxing the rich to pay for everything the government spends. If you are interested, take a look here The Pew Research Center does a very good job presenting the data.

Undervaluing "quality" jobs or naive parents?

Although I am more concerned with higher education, I found a somewhat interesting but more entertaining article on the Gallup site titled, U.S. Parents Optimistic About Graduation, Unsure About Jobs.  When you read this, or at least when I read this, I figured they would be talking about graduating from college, but they are actaully talking about graduating from HIGH SCHOOL.  In the main poll of this...poll... they ask people to rate on a 1-5 scale whether they know their child will graduate from high school and whether they know they will find a good job.  An overwhelming 91% of parents strongly agreed that they knew their child would graduate from high school (although the national average is only 73%) whereas 38% strongly agreed their child would find a good job after graduation.  Oddly enough, before dipping down into the 1's and 2's of this response (being that they disagree about the respective questions) 89% answered either 5-4-3 (saying they at least agreed) that they knew their child would find a good job after high school.  So does this poll eliminate the children planning on going to college? or are these respondent's children just not going to college?  And if they are not planning on going to college but are going to find a good job out of high school, why are the parents so eager to say that they KNOW they will graduate from high school (which 99% answered a 5-4-3 on).  This is obviously a poll with horrible questioning and problems with "mushiness index" because the question is too close to home (literally) for the respondents.

Teacher Unionization

With the recent strike of the Chicago teachers, an interesting question is posed: Are teacher's unions helpful?  America says "no".  As you can see from the attached image above, since 1976, the general opinion of the unions have received a negative connotation.  The image is from the article, Polling Shows Most Americans Think Teachers Unions Have Hurt Education Quality. Why does the public seem to think the unions lower education quality?  After some research, in most districts teacher compensation, or salaries, makes up 80% of the budget.  That means that only 20% of the budget is left over for school advances, sports, extracurriculars and so on.  Teachers are strongly protected by their union when it comes to pay cuts and other aspects of financial "equality", which they basically control.  Being unionized, they can essentially refuse pay cuts so schools are forced to dip into that remaining 20%, which makes school less enjoyable, which makes children hate their lives more, which makes for lower willingness to learn, which makes for lower marks, which makes for lower quality of education.  A lot of teachers get tenured in as little as working at a school for three years, which pretty much ensures they cannot get fire no matter how much they suck at teaching.  Basically, with teacher unions, there is no way to improve the quality of school and education when they are taking 80% of the money allocated to school districts.  In a lot of cases even, teachers receive a 4% annual salary upgrade.  Teachers really do not have it all that bad like people tend to think, they get free health care (in most cases for life) for themselves and their families, extraordinary job security and much better benefits than those in the private sector.


Source:
http://www.michiganreview.com/archives/2857
http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/10/polling-shows-most-americans-think-teach

Libya Response Poll!

Pollster Blog #2 Ladies and Gentlemen!

My first post was incredibly lack luster, simply because I didnt have much knowledge on the subject of polling at all! Now I am armed with some more information on what goes into a poll including the meaning behind the margin of sampling error and the confidence level. Typically, both of those can be found at the bottom of the polls. It belongs with the usual technical stuff.

Back to Libya though. After all the uproar that is happening in Libya right now, with Ambassador Chris Stevens being killed, the American reaction to Libyan Government and its citizens is, not surprisingly, low. I look to Ramussen Reports this week for a poll on Libya, as suggested by my wonderful professor Dr. Gelbman. The article titled "Just 29% Are Even Somewhat Confident Libya Will Punish Ambassador’s Killers" is pretty short. Did not expect that. However, it does provide one thing that my previous poll did not: the questions they asked. The Ramussen Reports provided a link to the questions so people could see what was asked. Recently, in class, our discussion has been based around nonattitudes and insincerity. A lot of the causes behind both of these stems from the questions, both how they are asked and who is asking.

Another nice point that of interest regarding the Ramussen Reports is by stating how they gathered the information. In this case, it was by an automated survey. They go into more detail about who they poll, how they decide who that is and many other factors. They are much more open and direct about their polling techniques than previous articles. Especially for someone who is trying to learn all they can about the various aspects of polling, this information is incredibly helpful!

See you all next time!