Re: Do citizens have a duty to speak out or shut up?
Hi Everyone:
Years ago, I worked for the United States Census Bureau. And though it wasn't my area of expertise, I did learn a great deal about what we called conditioning in questions. That is questions had to be asked in a manner that would not influence how they were answered thus producing what was known as response bias.
The above questions by Alger is a good example of this. They're not really designed to get an answer. They are designed to influence your thinking towards our government and imply that our government is definitely doing things wrong since it is obvious that they need to be criticized.
He could probably get away with this on many other web sites. But I just happen to be a retired statistician that worked for a few years in this field. Even the title of this thread "Do citizens have a duty to speak out or shut up?" is designed for a conditioned response.
Best wishes,
Mason
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