Views and Perceptions

[Bill Glasheen]

When discussions get heated, it's often difficult to separate feelings from facts. But in those discussions, perceptions and views weigh heavily on what transpires.

In light of mini flame wars of my forum, I thought it germaine to post the analysis of a recent worldwide survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Read the whole article to the end. Interesting...

- Bill

Posted 7/14/2005 11:29 PM

Muslim support of suicide bombing wanes
By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Support for suicide bombings has dropped significantly in several predominantly Muslim nations, a worldwide public-opinion survey has found — a positive note at a time concerns have been heightened by terrorist attacks in London, Iraq and Israel.

The report by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released Thursday, also found substantial concern about Islamic extremism not only among Westerners but also in Muslim nations. Three-quarters of those in Morocco and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia said Islamic extremism posed a threat to their countries.

A chasm continues to exist between the Muslim world and the West in attitudes toward the appropriate role of Islam in government and the roots of Islamic radicalism. But the survey showed ebbing support among Muslims for the terrorism that has defined global relations since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington nearly four years ago.

One possible reason: Some of the countries involved — Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey — have suffered devastating attacks on civilians within their borders, and Lebanon has been hit by political assassinations.

The findings are "good news because it means attitudes can change," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "But we have to put this in perspective. There still are very large percentages of people in the Muslim world who support suicide bombings ... and say they have a high regard for Osama bin Laden."

More than 17,000 people in 17 nations were interviewed from April to June for the survey, the sixth multination poll by the non-partisan group since 2002. Some results were released last month.

Among the new findings:

• Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan. The exception to the trend is Jordan, where support increased by 14 points, to 57%.

There are higher levels of support for suicide bombings that target Americans and their allies in Iraq, though they also have dropped. About half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said those attacks were justified.

• Confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him.

The al-Qaeda leader is viewed most positively in Jordan and Pakistan, where more than half say they have confidence in him.

• Most Muslims believe Islam is playing a larger role in their national politics and see that as a positive development.

In nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam were tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, a situation most of those surveyed saw as a bad thing.

Even so, in the United States and most Western nations majorities said they had favorable views of Muslims. Those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

[wes tasker]

Bill-

Just out of curiousity - taking into consideration the number of people polled, the number of nations, your reference to the thread in your forum, and your ending your intro to this post with "Interesting...", what do you interpret this survey to mean? What bearing do you think it has on the thread in your forum? How much weight do you actually give this survey? Thanks.

-wes tasker

[Bill Glasheen]

what do you interpret this survey to mean?

Let's start here, Wes. The original writeup is here.

Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics

[Bill Glasheen]

How much weight do you actually give this survey?

Seventeen countries and 17,000 people surveyed... That's a BIG survey!

It also means you get a sample of roughly 1000 per country. How they sampled the population and the response rate can affect results. But 1000 sampled will give you good precision on your estimate of the true feelings. I would believe results within a few percentage points.

Further analysis gives the gorey details. In general, these stats on margin of error and distribution of sample look good.

Methodological Appendix

Furthermore, this survey was given at two points in time. Both the absolute responses by country and changes over time pass my "sniff test", if you know what I mean. I always look to see if the results make sense before believing them.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Now, to the meaning...



Wow! Look at how predominantly Muslim countries now are starting to catch up with non-Muslim countries in their concern for Islamic extremism. And the degree to which they worry depends a lot on the degree to which they've experienced violence in the last year.

Lebanon and Jordan don't worry because they export terror. It's a Palestinian thing...

This I found very striking.



Muslims generally have little to complain about around the world. The only place where Muslims are barely viewed negatively (on the whole) are China and the Netherlands. Just barely half... Meanwhile, check out the negative attitudes around the world of Christians and Jews!

The data are the data.

Much more can be said about the reasoning for those feelings and perceptions.

What bearing do you think it has on the thread in your forum?

It has direct bearings on the London - We Are With You! and Islamophobia threads. It shows that attitudes are changing (negative trends for Bin Ladin, positive trends on concerns for terrorism). For whatever reason, terrorism's inertia appears to be ebbing and perhaps even waning. And it shows that people in general seem to be able to differentiate between Islam and sociopaths.

- Bill

[wes tasker]

Bill-

I'm not really up on statistics and the like, but my gut reaction is that 1000 per country is rather small and not really much to make a solid opinion of. Like I said, it's just my uneducated opinion.

If you don't mind indulging me - how is it that such a small percentage of a given country gives one the data to say "they believe this or that"? Thank you.

-wes

[Mills75]

Although I do like the thought and the nice picture these statistics would suggest and seem to reveal I have to agree with Wes and also with my uneducated opinion and say it seems like a propaganda tool to make things seem nicer in order for attitudes to maybe become more relaxed and nicer as a byproduct. I really wouldn't trust the opinion of 1000 people either cause if you asked 1000 pittsburghers who their favorite football team was they would likely respond The Steelers of course.

So i'd have to know more about the area's they polled here and the traditional attitudes found in those places and still even then I think 1000 people is to small to say for sure in a country of millions. I don't trust polls in general and often think they have big flaws in them. The world is to big to ask a question and so I wait for solid results and I never even pay attention or give any heed to political polls here in the U.S.

Jeff ....The Skeptic lol...

[Mills75]

I also wanted to add how did they contact the people in these countries that were polled? How was the polling done by phone or something? By mail maybe? How many terrorists have phones and even if they did how many would answer those phones or mailings honestly. The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him naive enough to believe he doesn't have an enemy in you right? I don't by it or trust it just in my opinion.

It's real nice if it's true just I wouldn't be so quick to say it is in my view cause that is a very small chunk of a huge pineapple and most of these people who preach hate are in secluded areas like the land between Afghanistan and India where there is tribe rule and no mail boxes or phones right? I wouldn't think most people like that who think we are sinners would have all our common conviences or use them like a kind of Amish group but one that hates and doesn't have Televisions or computers or mail not like us anyhow..

If I got a mailing that asked me do you hate cops and I was in the mafia of course I would send it back saying I donate every year to the policemans ball anyhow right. numbers sometimes can lie also. The greatest accomplishment the devil ever had was convincing people he did not exist..The usual suspects one of my favorites movies. Terrorists and people who hate have their greatest allie in hiding wouldn't you think


The BTK killer didn't answer his phone for the twenty some years of his reign of murder and escaping custody by answering hello BTK killer speaking how may I help you? lol


And I think terrorists aren't dumb also they saw what happened when someone did a fake interview with the one Afghan leader who was working with us before we invaded to take out the Taliban who got blown to bits when they set him up to do an interview with a fake reporter who turned out to be a suicide bomber instead. I don't think many terrorists would be willing to do a sit down question and answer session with strangers and if they were dumb enough to do it chances are they'd lie through their teeth.

Judah taught us a long time ago to never trust what seems to be apparent. He lied and sold out and alot will do the same in this world so as always if humans are flawed and can lie so can the numbers they send out into the world.

If many jurors aren't credible or reliable sources then why would it be different when it comes to people who answer polls..

Jeff

[Bill Glasheen]

Wes

Good questions! People should question.

This all gets down to the fundamentals of statistics, Wes. The mathematics behind it were developed back when agricultural researchers were testing fertilizers.

There's a story about how the P = .05 level of certainty was developed. Many years ago, a chemical engineer was testing his new fertilizer in a farm field. There was a decent yield. But this was an engineer, and they like to quantify things. Just saying that it looked like a good crop didn't seem precise enough.

The engineer asked the farmer what he thought. As the story goes, he said the following. "Well... I can't tell you exactly how good your stuff is, but I will tell you this. I've been farming this field for 20 years, and this is the best crop I've ever had!"

Now 1 out of 20 is 1/20 = .05. So the engineer was able to quantify (more or less) that this crop was in the upper fifth percentile in terms of yield.

If you want to find opinions, the perfect thing to do is sample everybody. But sampling either by phone or face-to-face - which is how this was done - is VERY expensive and labor intensive. So you want to use statistics to help you get the best estimate of the truth you can afford.

The first thing you want to do is find a way to do random sampling. It's like when you have a big-assed jar of black and white marbles, and you want quickly to come up with an estimate of black vs. white without having to count the whole thing. (You have better things to do.) So first you make sure they are mixed well. Then you close your eyes and reach in to grab one. This is random sampling. It's equivalent to doing something like choosing everyone in a group of people with a Social Security number ending in 02. Since the last 4 digits are chosen totally randomly, that would be a random 2% sample of your group of people.

How MANY you want to choose to get a good estimate is determined by your tolerance of being wrong. Computers have done massive studies of these phenomenon, which gives the statistician tables they can use to pick sample numbers that will make you 95% confident that the estimate you have is within a certain range. (Remember the farmer and the best crop in 20 years. ) That's what they did here, and that's generally what they do when polling people to figure out who is going to win an election, or how your constituents feel about a particular issue. When you read the Methodological Appendix, they use phrases like 95% confidence limits, and percentage ranges of the estimates.

This is how real people in my business get work done every day, Wes. We literally can't afford to be perfect. But we can be good enough, and quantify how good our estimates are. What the ranges (a few percentage points) tell you is this. If you see a number (like 25% dislike Christians), that tells you that if I did that whole survey 1000 times (sometimes called a Monte Carlo study), that 95% of those survey results would fall within the percentage range given. It's the "comfort zone" of your estimate of the truth.

Where can things go wrong? The surveys have to be constructed in such a way that you get a valid representation of "truth." There's an art to asking questions the right way. You need to sample correctly. And you need to put people in a position where they feel their answers are confidential and they have no reason to "trick" the surveyor. A good example is this. Polls before elections are generally pretty good. They were darned good in the last 2 presidential elections in terms of trend, and only started to get wierd in the last day before the election. People generally feel comfortable telling you which candidate they like. But exit polls are notoriously unreliable. Generally people feel it's none of your GD business whom they just voted for.

Hope that helps.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Jeff

Sampling 1000 people on "binary" questions is industry standard. To do much better (get pecision down to the next significant digit), you'd have to ask 10,000 people per group. NOBODY can afford that. Seventeen countries times 10,000 would have been 170,000 phone or face-to-face surveys. Nobody does this

This is a valid survey. Don't shoot the messenger. If you want to know the degree of uncertainty, it's all there for you to peruse.

If we as living pattern recognizers couldn't rely on unconscious tools like these, then our genes would be history. People do or avoid doing certain things with fewer observations of "truth" than what you see here. We live by hunches based on empirical observations. Those who can't end up proving Darwin's laws.

Smart people understand and accept what the mathematical field of statistics tells us. Want a good example? Go take a trip to Las Vegas some time. Walk down a road where the major gambling casinos are. Can you just smell the money? Wow... However are those people able to make so much money? Answer - they understand the fields of statistics and psychology.

If you "get" this, your name might be Donald Trump. If you don't, you'll always be a Joe Sixpack.

- Bill

[wes tasker]

Jeff-

I appreciate your skepticism, but I would like to make it clear that I didn't question the poll because I thought it was a propaganda piece to make things look better. Truth be told, I feel the opposite (minus the propaganda part...)

Bill-

Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I guess I just have a knee-jerk reaction to the way the conclusions were written versus the actual amount of people surveyed. It's hard to quantify things like this to begin with - let alone taking a small sample from many countries and then coming up with conclusions that are written in a such a way that (to me anyway...) they come across as authoritive and complete. Anyway, thanks again for your explanations. Take care.

-wes tasker

[Bill Glasheen]

Wes

You are right that - for many subtle reasons - it is difficult to quantify how people think. But people will try anyway. And it's much better to ask people specific questions than it is to presume how people think. Measurement generally is good. Good measurement is better.

Just to let you know... Zogby is one of the top pollsters in the country, and generally uses a sample of 1000 in various pollings he uses. Again, it's industry standard, and backed by the mathematical field of statistics. Tolerances on the estimates reached (expressed as percentages) generally will be plus or minus a few percent. It's a bit better than putting your finger in a pot of water to tell what temperature it is.

- Bill