MetaFilter posts tagged with survey

What philosophers believe

leibniz — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:39:31 -0800

Want to know what philosophers, those people you pay to think on your behalf, actually believe? David Chalmers and David Bourget recently canvassed several thousand professional philosophers for their views on a range of central philosophical issues. The authors call this an exercise in the sociology of philosophy, rather than providing reason for anyone to change what they think. Some results are unsurprising (81.6% are non-skeptical realists about the external world) where others are more curious (41% think aesthetic value is objective). (Mostly) wikipedia pages on the philosophical problems surveyed: a priori knowledge; abstract objects; aesthetic value; analytic-synthetic distinction; epistemic justification; external world skepticism; free will; god; knowledge claims contextualism v relativism v invariantism; knowledge rationalism v empiricism; laws of nature Humean v non-Humean; logic classical v non-classical; mental content internalism v externalism; meta-ethical realism v antirealism; metaphilosophical naturalism v non-naturalism; mind physicalism v non-physicalism; moral judgement cognitivism v non-cognitivism; moral motivation internalism v externalism; Newcomb's problem; normative ethical positions; perceptual experience; personal identity; proper names; scientific realism; political positions; teletransporter thought experiment; time; trolley problem; truth; zombies.

The Happiest State

Taft — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:51:21 -0800

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is a survey that rated the 50 states of America from most to least happiest, based on things like emotional health, job satisfaction, and healthy decisions. The top states may surprise you.

qsr drive-thru service study

aerotive — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:31:39 -0800

Craving some speedy, accurately prepared, clearly enunciated junk food with a typographically proper menu? QSR has released their yearly Best Drive Thru rankings, with reports for speed of service, order accuracy, speaker clarity, and menuboard appearance. Overall description of the survey, survey questions and demographics, and Methodology (via the consumerist and chicago trib)

Peering into your neighbors' windows (in aggregate)

dammitjim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:46:40 -0800

The fine folks at OkCupid, the dating site, have begun to analyze aggregate data from the questions their users answer to form dating profiles, revealing, among other things, that users in Nevada are more open to rape fanstasies than those from Michigan. OkCupid users often answer hundreds of such questions, and various tests, in an effort to increase their match effectiveness. OkCupid has just started their blog discussing a few questions, and ask "These are just a few of the thousands of questions we have in our database. Are there any other you’d like us to analyze?"

Do I have to choose?

You Should See the Other Guy — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:14:15 -0800

Pick One

Watch from behind the sofa

Artw — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:30:53 -0800

Is Doctor Who too scary for kids? Parents surveyed by TheBabyWebsite seem to think so. But is being scared a good thing? (via io9)

Visualizing emotions

desjardins — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:22:27 -0800

How do you ask a stranger (not necessarily fluent in English) to recall and describe their private emotions? A research project visually displays anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love.

Do you like this post? a)Yes b)Of course c)How could I not? d)Maybe

Gyan — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:26:24 -0800

Rethinking Public Opinion - the immense importance of public opinion polling in American politics, and the under-reported problems at the heart of the enterprise, combine to call for a serious critique of the polling industry, its assumptions, and its method

Querying the noosphere

Baby_Balrog — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:18:24 -0800

According to a recent international survey, there remains no global consensus regarding who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. "On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator... The U.S. government was to blame, according to 23 percent of Germans and 15 percent of Italians." The poll was collected by World Public Opinion, a neat website filled with various polls about interesting topics.

The sharks are just jealous of our ice cream

Tehanu — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:50:23 -0800

BBC News is running a weekly ongoing series of articles that describe and illustrate common misconceptions (and manipulations) of statistics using examples from the news and ads.
Lesson 1: surveys. Lesson 2: counting. Lesson 3: percentage. Lesson 4: averages. Lesson 5: causation.

It's the Pew News IQ... Comin' right at you...

wendell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:15:53 -0800

What's YOUR Pew News IQ? (not to be confused with the New Zoo Revue, even though it rhymes) We've discussed Pew's surveys about news knowledge before, but this time you can test yourself. Just 12 eeeee-zeee questions (not 100). Wendell got them all correct. Can you? Honestly, if you get more than 2 wrong, you should not be commenting on MetaFilter. But you should be reading MetaFilter and all its NewsFilter-ish links. Yes, I said it.

3 to 10 classroom hours

Artw — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:09:59 -0800

16% of US science teachers believe human beings have been created by God within the last 10,000 years. 25% of science teachers spend some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. 12.5% teach it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species". 2% say they do not cover evolution at all. Teachers who have taken more science courses themselves devote more time to evolution - "This may be because better-prepared teachers are more confident in dealing with students' questions about a sensitive subject."

White Dudes Making Web Sites

chunking express — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:48:57 -0800

In April 2007, A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide. I thought the demographics data was the most interesting. The homogeneity of the "web 2.0" crowd comes up often: What it's like at Web 2.0, The Best and the Worst of the Web 2.0 Summit, Is Web 2.0 Really the Wisdom of the Crowd?, The Future of White Boy clubs.

Deja View: Historic landscape "rephotos" (1800s, 1970s, 1990s)

taz — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:15:41 -0800

The Third View project is a fascinating presentation of "rephotographs" of over 100 historic landscape sites in the American West that presents original 19th-century survey photographs, photographed again in the 1970s, then once again in the '90s - from the original vantage points, under similar lighting conditions, at (roughly) the same time of day and year. [Flash, and you'll probably need to allow pop-ups; a little more info inside...]

US Muslims more peaceful than their fellow citizens?

laz-e-boy — Wed, 23 May 2007 12:00:19 -0800

Surprising findings in Pew study of US Muslims. The interweb is all atwitter over some of the findings of a Pew Research Center study of the attitudes of Muslim-Americans (the most comprehensive one done yet). While most of the findings should be welcomed (US Muslims are well off, appreciate being here, have non-Muslim friends, shun extremism, etc.), there is one troubling statistic: 6% of US Muslims - and 15% of US Muslims under 30 - believe that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "often or sometimes justified". Sounds bad, but what happens when you ask the same question of non-Muslim Americans? Turns out that 24% of all Americans agreed - four times the 6% of US Muslims who share that view. So are US Muslims more peaceful than their non-Muslim neighbors?

I like to make sexy time!

KokuRyu — Wed, 23 May 2007 11:25:53 -0800

The UBC Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory has an online sex survey to take. If you've got an hour to spare, the Sex Research Team at the University of British Columbia needs YOU. Go to www.christofflab.ca/sexstudy to take an anonymous sex survey. VIA

The best 100 books written since 1982.

unSane — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:55:12 -0800

British bookseller Waterstones asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. These are the results.

You down with BYP?

The Straightener — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:31:34 -0800

The Black Youth Project, "will examine the attitudes, resources, and culture of African American youth ages 15 to 25, exploring how these factors and others influence their decision-making, norms, and behavior in critical domains such as sex, health, and politics." The project is run by University of Chicago professor Cathy J. Cohen. The sitemap may help you get a handle on what is a tremendous amount of information. Or you could read the press release for a succint summary and links to mentions in the media.

Polling the Jihad

wendell — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:00:26 -0800

What Makes a Muslim Radical? Gallup polls 9000 Muslims in 9 countries and separates the Moderates from the Radicals. Most of the results are counter to "Conventional Wisdom". The most important stuff is on the last page of 5, including the methodology for deciding who was radical and who was moderate (in small print). Let's all get out our copies of How to Lie With Statistics and see if this survey is fatally flawed, shall we?

Baylor Survey of Religion

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:34:06 -0800

The Baylor Religion Survey (PDF) has been released, and - big surprise - Americans are religious. Just how religious? Although nearly a quarter of Americans believe in a "Distant god" - an essentially deist view - only 5.2% consider themselves atheist and 89% subscribe to some kind of organized religion. More stats: There are more evangelical Protestants (33.6%) than mainline Protestants or members of traditionally black churches put together. Of all people affiliated with a religion, 93% are Christian. And those considering themselves biblical literalists are twice as likely to support a pro-military, anti-crime political agenda.

Size Doesn't Matter... Size Doesn't Matter... Keep repeating...

wendell — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:43:09 -0800

I've long felt that the U.S. of A. "jumped the shark" as a country when we rejected the Metric System. The price of gasoline would still be under a dollar (per liter). Yet, we'd drive less because a short 20 mile trip would become a long 32 km trip. Then there's the most important measurement of all [maybe NSFW animated graph], providing us with the joy of 12.9(!) while we try to ignore that Japan is .1 ahead of us and France is .1 more than South Africa. (And is that Korean average North or South?)

The World Map of Happiness

heylight — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:06:01 -0800

Danes top world happiness ranking. "Piecing together information from more than 100 studies in the growing field of happiness research, a British psychologist has produced what he says is the first world map of happiness." The study ranks each country based on it's SWL (Satisfaction with Life, calculated from data published by the New Economics Foundation) and contrasts it with statistics such as Life Expectancy, GDP per capita and the level of Access to Education.

Click survey 2, Electric Bugaloo

mathowie — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:39:30 -0800

You might have caught the first Click Survey on mefi projects, but there's a new and much more interesting series of 8 images in Click Survey 2. Click where you feel like and watch the results in real time.

Neurotic? Extroverted?

Ethereal Bligh — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 01:16:37 -0800

Personality

“Research in individual differences addresses three broad questions: 1) developing an adequate descriptive taxonomy of how people differ; 2) applying differences in one situation to predict differences in other situations; and 3) testing theoretical explanations of the structure and dynamics of individual differences.”

Visit the Personality Project. While you're there, participate in the Internet Personality Inventory Survey.

16 hours

Schroder — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:43:23 -0800

Where'd the remaining 27% go. Researchers in Germany have finished a survey that tells them how people spend their time. With an average life-span of 78 years most time is spent sleeping with the least time spent making new people. Number crunching this research [direct image link] reveals: