I had a good chuckle this past weekend. Actually, there were several. But one in particular stood out because the humor inherent in the statement that made me laugh was so self-evident, while at the same time something that we so rarely consider.
A close friend was visiting for a couple of days, and as is custom, excellent conversation ensued. By this, I mean true interchange. Not the stuff that some many people seem to engage in – ranting towards others and not listening.
When I get together with this individual, we typically open the mind of the other person, listen intently, share stories and make each other laugh. When he shared the following statement, he wasn’t necessarily trying to make me crack up, but the truth of what he said (once you thought about it a bit) made me laugh because otherwise it would upset you.
His statement was to the effect of the following, “I’m sick and tired of hearing polls that say the country is going in the wrong direction.” On the face of it, when we are exposed to these poll results and ensuing story, we don’t think twice about it.
Our conversation that ensued embraced a number of perspectives regarding how people respond to these polls, how misleading they are, and how they drive us to think negatively about events and the “direction” of our country. As if we are always going downhill.
Rather than polling with specific questions that lead the responder to think about what is going right or trending in a positive direction, what gets posed instead is the generic question. “Do you believe the country is going in the right direction?” If you answer yes or no, it his highly likely that it doesn’t matter what year it is, who is president or what specifically is going on in the country.
Because U.S. citizens seem to have a built-in meter for negative events (mostly driven by media accounts that extrapolate on events with vicious adjectives and brutal images), we are regularly going to respond to that polling question by agreeing with the statement that the country is going in the wrong direction. It’s the easy out. “Yeah, things aren’t looking too good.”
As opposed to, “Hmmmm, we keep increasing our output of renewable electric generating sources. The lights stayed on over the weekend when those two severe thunderstorms hit our area. There’s fresh food AGAIN this week in our supermarket. I was able to hop in my car and drive to my brother’s house two hours away and never got stuck in a traffic jam.”
Instead, we’d complain about the electric grid getting over-taxed and the potential for failure during peak load, food prices going up, and the cost of gasoline to drive to your brother’s house. Somehow the poll question needs to be reworded to dig into the variety of current issues.
A simple declarative question can’t encapsulate all that is going on given the world in which we live. There needs to be an open-ended question that allows the responder to provide context from their perspective. Polling typically won’t provide that because that would be too difficult to frame and put a percentage figure on it.
Given life’s complications, there’s usually something we’re all battling to turn around or improve while at the same time good things are also coming our way. Sometimes the load is overwhelming, no question about that, whether it’s personally or for the country at large. In the future, when you hear 63 percent of those polled don’t think the country is going in the right direction, remember to ask, “What direction are you talking about?”
A close friend was visiting for a couple of days, and as is custom, excellent conversation ensued. By this, I mean true interchange. Not the stuff that some many people seem to engage in – ranting towards others and not listening.
When I get together with this individual, we typically open the mind of the other person, listen intently, share stories and make each other laugh. When he shared the following statement, he wasn’t necessarily trying to make me crack up, but the truth of what he said (once you thought about it a bit) made me laugh because otherwise it would upset you.
His statement was to the effect of the following, “I’m sick and tired of hearing polls that say the country is going in the wrong direction.” On the face of it, when we are exposed to these poll results and ensuing story, we don’t think twice about it.
Our conversation that ensued embraced a number of perspectives regarding how people respond to these polls, how misleading they are, and how they drive us to think negatively about events and the “direction” of our country. As if we are always going downhill.
Rather than polling with specific questions that lead the responder to think about what is going right or trending in a positive direction, what gets posed instead is the generic question. “Do you believe the country is going in the right direction?” If you answer yes or no, it his highly likely that it doesn’t matter what year it is, who is president or what specifically is going on in the country.
Because U.S. citizens seem to have a built-in meter for negative events (mostly driven by media accounts that extrapolate on events with vicious adjectives and brutal images), we are regularly going to respond to that polling question by agreeing with the statement that the country is going in the wrong direction. It’s the easy out. “Yeah, things aren’t looking too good.”
As opposed to, “Hmmmm, we keep increasing our output of renewable electric generating sources. The lights stayed on over the weekend when those two severe thunderstorms hit our area. There’s fresh food AGAIN this week in our supermarket. I was able to hop in my car and drive to my brother’s house two hours away and never got stuck in a traffic jam.”
Instead, we’d complain about the electric grid getting over-taxed and the potential for failure during peak load, food prices going up, and the cost of gasoline to drive to your brother’s house. Somehow the poll question needs to be reworded to dig into the variety of current issues.
A simple declarative question can’t encapsulate all that is going on given the world in which we live. There needs to be an open-ended question that allows the responder to provide context from their perspective. Polling typically won’t provide that because that would be too difficult to frame and put a percentage figure on it.
Given life’s complications, there’s usually something we’re all battling to turn around or improve while at the same time good things are also coming our way. Sometimes the load is overwhelming, no question about that, whether it’s personally or for the country at large. In the future, when you hear 63 percent of those polled don’t think the country is going in the right direction, remember to ask, “What direction are you talking about?”