Gays/Military Vote Results

[TheMason]

Here are the results of my first NG Poly Sci experiement...

Military
Let Them: 5 (55.5%)

Don't Let Them: 2 (22.2%)

Conditional: 2 (22.2%)

Civilian
Let Them: 29 (85.3%)

Don't Let Them: 5 (14.7%)

Conditional: 0 (0%)

I threw out two votes based upon the fact that on one I was unsure which way the person was voting, and one because the person wanted to see gays die.

I did add the conditional late (I apologize) because of several votes that placed conditions on their service. I was not comfortable defaulting these votes into one or another category.

I was expecting more participation on the military side, but perhaps this is explained by apathy. Over 66% of military NG people think that gays should serve in some capacity. However with such a small sample these results can easily be debated.

I was expecting the results to be counter-intuitative in that a higher percentage of Civilians would have a problem with gays in the military. However, I was wrong and the poll proves conventional wisdom correct that a higher rate of those who have never served (compared to those who are or have) have no problem with gays in the military.

[Peter-II]

At 1/11/07 10:59 AM, TheMason wrote: I was expecting the results to be counter-intuitative in that a higher percentage of Civilians would have a problem with gays in the military. However, I was wrong and the poll proves conventional wisdom correct that a higher rate of those who have never served (compared to those who are or have) have no problem with gays in the military.

As you said, it was a small sample. With small samples, statistics fluctuate a lot.

Also to be taken into consideration is the fact that you only asked NG members. There may be correlations with ages, typical political leanings and the like.

[TheMason]

At 1/11/07 11:21 AM, Peter-II wrote: As you said, it was a small sample. With small samples, statistics fluctuate a lot.

Also to be taken into consideration is the fact that you only asked NG members. There may be correlations with ages, typical political leanings and the like.

I know, I know...I would be interested in what the results would be like with a larger sample. I was hoping to get a large enough sample to do something with ages and gender.

[Togukawa]

As Peter already said, sample size isn't the only thing that matters.

You've polled only civilians and military people that go on newgrounds . That's a very specific subcategory, which means you have far too much bias to ever conclude anything about civilians vs military on gays in general.

It's similar to a poll on whether the government should provide free beer for everyone to both women and men, but only sample from people that go to alcoholics anonymous. You'd conclude that there's no difference in opinion between men and women. Needless to say that this conclusion isn't worth anything. Concluding that within the population of alcoholics, there's no difference between women and men, would be correct though. Unless of course there are other confounding factors, like all the women being fanatical christians and all the men being radical hippies.

Similarly, you can at best conclude something about civilians that go on the politics section of newgrounds vs military people that go on the politics section of newgrounds. A very small subpopulation of civilians and military people...