Re: Why do people cite surveys?
It might even be true. If there are a lot of people who sweat very little, but a few people who sweat very profusely, there will indeed be only a few people who sweat more than the mean amount of moisture per day. (There will always be 50% who sweat more than the median amount per day.) A fine example of the sort of thing that gets changed when a copywriter tries to summarize a scientific study.
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Ummm, actually the point is that we can know for sure the distribution of various ailments (e.g., dandruff) in the population.
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And how could we possibly know that? We'd have to estimate it, either by collecting a sample of people and seeing which ones have dandruff, or by doing something fancy with the numbers of people who see doctors for it or buy shampoos for it. Surveying, in some fashion.
It's certainly possible that two surveys on the same topic will yield different results according to how the questions are worded. There really is no way to avoid that except to test the survey on a pilot group and get some feedback on how their interpreted the questions. There are some standard rules about neutral phrasing of questions, which are a starting point.
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