FIRST QUESTION

I gotta put it out there I don't think I could be more against this gauging people's knowledge question. Here are my arguments against it, if everyone else wants it obviously thats fine then I don't want to be a survey question dictator but here is why I think it is not effective: 1. It is still not going to give us workable choices. Ok so we dont throw the results away we weigh them differently. How? what function on spss will allow us to put more emphasis on some questions and not others when trying to determine the mean answer? 2. No matter how hard we try I do not think we could ever get the question answered properly, standardized tests can barely test a students knowledge on a topic and they have been at it for years. 3. It is utterly and completely and totally absolutely irrelevant what there knowledge is on Afghanistan. If we want to know what educated people who have studied Afghanistan think about Afghanistan we can go to Jstor and search Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. We want to know what average BC residents that vote think about it. If they go to the polls with incomplete information then they are going to take our survey with incomplete information. The point is not to find out what smart people think, or avid Afghanistan researchers think, its to find out what everyday people think. 4. Your creating a selection bias within the survey!!!!! We don't want to just hear from people who know about Afghanistan we want to hear from a group of individuals who we could transcend their opinions to generate an estimate about what a greater population would feel about the issues. Thats what we have been learning in class and that should influence our survey.

I know I put it harshly, but thats why I feel it would be a huge huge huge mistake. But if everyone thinks its needed then I suppose I understand.