As I said all religions are nothing but myths. They nothing more than ethniticity in the shape of faith. Faiths come in different flavor according to your place of birth and what ever religious empire you are born into. religions are nothing more than a surreal mental clothing whose weave and threads depends upon geography.

I think that’s a good way to see religious belief, but are you suggesting asking respondents’ religious affiliations is somehow not legitimate? It is, after all, an important component of self-identification for many… Although when it came to this particular issue, I did not consider religion in my analysis of the newspaper industry’s prospects.

I already wrote a message regarding this – please consider dropping the “NASCAR fan” question. NASCAR is too popular and widespread a racing series for this to have a lot of validity. I answer “yes,” for example, and I am not a chaw-chewing, tobacco-spitting former pit poppy. I know exactly what you are asking, and even people who are chaw-chewing, tobacco-spitting folk looking forward to tailgating in the infield and knocking back a few 12-packs and grilling cooter sausages know what you’re getting at by asking that question, and are smart enough to answer any which way just to have a little fun. If you asked me, “Are you more of a fan of Formula 1 or NASCAR?” I’d check F-1. I’m talking stereotypes and poking fun – if you party in the infield or grill any type of meat, I’m exaggerating – I don’t think there are any such people and “cooter” was a joke. So, what is valid about perpetuating stereotypes? By the way, the Second Amendment survey was almost worse than the other one I took previously. Totally leading questions or false dichotomies – how is this supposed to produce any type of decent result? By the way, “cooter” meas turtle.

And I’m a 5th-generation Southern Californian. Nothing about that survey applied to me.

Though the NASCAR question never fails to raise eyebrows, it is by no means a perpetuation of stereotypes or a way to ask something without really asking it, or saying something without really saying it. By highlighting the responses of NASCAR fans we’re not categorizing people who would otherwise disappear in demographic anonymity, but rather highlighting a group of Americans who have certain shared values, beliefs and behaviors. Are data about NASCAR fans is not intended to imply anything negative or stereotypical about this group. We do not ask this question to gauge the views of a (as you say), a “chaw-chewing, tobacco-spitting former pit poppy” but simply to identify the views of NASCAR fans. Our polls are scientific, and ZI’s years of experience has shown that this question is worth asking since it yields particular, telling demographic details. This questions is not meant to be derogatory in any way, and is a good a way to access a certain demographic of U.S. adults as asking where they like to shop, and whether or not they go to church.

The perpetuity we thought inherrent within the fourth state. Has turned out to be epheral. The religious affiliations or lack there off by News print owners has a lot to do with the editorial contents almost as much as the print owners degree of political partisaship. Such bias within the print media explains why blogs are so popular within the general population. The desire to get away from percieved biases is real regardless if the bias is real or not. This perceived bias religious or political has a direct influence with the profit or loss line.

Wait a minute…I read some where a study on poll numbers. It went something like…”The reliability of a poll depends no only on geography, the subject, but also the greater the numbers polled the greater the reliability. This same study gave out a minimum integer for maximun reliability. But also pointed out that there is maximum integer where the percentage won’t change regardless of how many more you ask above a certain integer.
35% of 3500 repondents said yes on question X. You don’t need to ask 10.000 respondents because the percentage will remain the same to question X
However a poll that only sampled 500 of so respondents is a useless poll, a supect poll, a biased poll, a ‘pushed’ poll.
Anytime I don’t see the number of respondents on a poll I tend disregard the poll and question the poll taker motives.

According to our data though, people are not so bothered by the religious or political biases of various print media sources as to disregard their contents altogether. People are still flocking to newspaper websites, written by the same people as the papers. I think that it’s the immediacy of blogs and newspapers (and tv) websites that attracts readers rather than the transparency of Internet writers’ ideological biases. The papers just don’t get there fast enough.

Hi Maya — OK, first off, it’s my impression that Zogby is a private, commercial enterprise. Zogby can include any questions it wants on any survey, at any time. I’m led to believe by your response that end-users of your product must in some way value what you believe provides them with valid answers based on fandom for a spectator sport. I am guessing then that such results have no meaning for stick and ball sport fandom; and probably it is considered unimportant by Zogby to look at such things as participation in ACTUAL sports (- like, the concept of “soccer mom”?). In particular, since I just completed a book about Tony Hawk, seems to me that X-Sports (XSPN, X-Games, etc.) are very rapidly growing, with many members, and they’re now crossing into reaching their third generation.

I just answered Paul regarding his OMG – everybody hates Baby Boomers – commentary. One hallmark of that generation that I have noticed is serious mental rigidity. Basically, people of that generation tend to have conclusions in mind, and want to form facts or responses around that conclusion, and often will go to any length to “create” or force support for what they believe to be true. This is an issue in science in terms of observer bias and construction of experiments, and they have instituted many different methods and protocols to counteract this, to achieve more valid results.

Basically, I’ve now done 3-4 surveys, each of which irritated me with greater efficiency than the one previous to it. They all had many “leading” questions, they all featured more than one or two “false dichotomies” (i.e. – providing forced, limited alternatives), and many had questions with double-negatives or confusingly-written structures.

And I am going to add to that, the NASCAR fan question (I was a fan as a child with my grandfather, and I’m not going to abandon Lloyd Ruby and Cale Yarbrough because today, people on the news make fun of people that go to the races and have a .22 in the gun rack back of their Club Cab), the church attendance question, and the actual “name your political affiliation” question.

“Our polls are scientific, and ZI’s years of experience has shown that this question is worth asking since it yields particular, telling demographic details,” you said.

Well, I think it is important to look at “What is scientific?” Zogby is clearly a commercial enterprise, and these surveys are at heart, flawed, because from what I can see, they are done with groups that “pre-select” themselves. I do not remember how I got signed up for the list, but I imagine – I got an email about a survey of some type, and I signed up.

There are many different people and different types of people that would decline that offer. Therefore, they would pre-select themselves out of the survey pool. Now, whether deliberate or not, it appears that the surveys are becoming increasingly tedious and obviously designed to obtain certain pre-selected results regarding what are perceived as political or social issues. If I am growing less interested because they are all very similar and asking the same dumb questions over and over, then I’m selecting myself out of the process. Are all of the statistically significant NASCAR fan group also making a similar choice?

The sample size for this particular survey conducted from May 29, 2009 to June 1, 2009 included 3003 people.

Good to know. Any poll above 2.500 takes man power and purpose. Any poll that fails to to give out the number of respondents, is a suspect poll on account that the sampling is small therefore a useless poll that may have been arranged to provide a sought after result.

Maya…We also hope to make you go…”HUMMN” and maybe take something learned here, expand it and make it greater. in the mean time I hope you find the comments lively and engaging.

there’s little distinction between internet news, tv news or newspapers.the difference is in the preference to how conservative or liberal one is and choosing a source closest to ones personal views. Fox new is far right;msnbc is far lef and cnn oscillates between the two in a feeble attempt to be in the center. the atlanta journal is conservative though it’s editor is a liberal- because georgis is over-run with conservatives. newspapers are geographical and tend to espouse the views of the majority of the population. the nation is almost split between the political parties so because i am a democrat i have to get my news from cnn or msnbc. the internet news is excerpts from the tv news.newspapers also have a substantial time delay in reporting the news and the instant news is on tv. tv news is then shunted to the internet where the advantage is one can scan all the daily news and pick out what they want to look at that they might otherwise miss on the tv news.