Bogus poll news again
Stuff has a story “Dishonest Kiwi Travellers”, based on a survey press release from Hotels.com. The survey asked people if they had stolen things from hotels and used the responses to rank countries by honesty, with the travellers who denied taking things being rated more honest than the ones who admitted it (rather than the other way around).
Fortunately it doesn’t really matter how honest the responses were, since if you follow a few links you can find a press release for the Canadian part of the survey, which admits
In a recent survey hotels.com® asked its Canadian email subscribers , including those in Quebec, about what they look for in hotel accommodations, and you might be surprised at what they had to say.
Or in other words, it’s a bogus poll.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »