Who are WE? Daily Kos community... know theyself.
Over the past several weeks several folks asked for a return of the Demographic Tuesdays (scroll up from bottom of list).
Despite, or maybe because of primary mania, let's give it a try.
Since a random sample is not possible, the potential validity of the Poll is improved by the diary and poll being up and available in the Recommended list throughout the day, from early morning in the East coast through the evening West coast time. It is not a matter of my ego (really!). Just a matter of giving all types of people, from early morning users in the East to late evening accessers in the West, equal opportunity to see it and to maybe choose to participate and vote, and so minimize the potential for selection bias.
So -- if you think that there is value in doing this, again, now -- please vote in the poll AND recommend the diary.
Who are we?
Know thyself.
Like this one, the old series started with "Age." It got over 11,000 votes and stayed up in the Recommended list all day.
Since it seemed to have hit a positive nerve with the community, I kept doing them, and we covered a whole lot of topics (I suggest scroll down to bottom of list and work your way up).
But since then the community has grown a lot, and maybe we have changed.
Surely now, during the heated primary season active users may be different, or maybe not, then we were back then.
We found out that we were, at that time, probably, quite middle aged, relatively educated, wealthy, and white, with a 2 to 1 male to female. But with surprisingly (I thought at the time) representative regional and urban-rural distribution, which was fantastic (not just urban bi-coastal).
The last time we did age, we had a mode/plurality age of 45-49 years old, certainly older then the then prevelent cliche of 20-somethings bloggers. At the time that got some attention.
In addition to the Poll subject results themselves -- being an, admittedly incomplete and less then statistically valid, way of learning about the daily kos community -- there were many other reasons I thought that they were useful:
One reason to do them was simply that they were fun.
Another reason was to stimulate discussion via the diary and comments around each topic, quite apart foom the poll itself. I was always surprised how much of the discussion was personal and how relatively non-political they were.
Of course there were some controversies. The several polls and diaries around Race generated heated comment and debate, and I accidently dissed some folks in the category groupings in the Religion poll.
Of course these polls are not "scientific." Since the poll is inherently self selecting and is not a random sample there is always the possibility for selection bias bias including but not limited to responder bias, making the survey results different than truth. These will never be valid random sample. And just size alone does not make it valid since still self selecting and has inherent selection bias. But probably has some validity, though since not a random sample, and don't know enough about total population, sample frame and self selecting factors, cannot even measure how inaccurate it is. Yet probably has some validity... yet not valid and can't even measure how invalid... yet.... Granting all that, there are some indicators suggestive of possible validity in these polls: for example if distriubtion is relatively stable and does not jump around wildly this is not definititive but suggestive (at least that it is not being "freeped". Also, when poll done repeatedly, either same way, or only slightly different way (some advantage to doing slightly differently, if thought out, as test of validity), at different times, lets say different day of week, weekday and weekend, morning vs. night, months or years apart.
Some folks asked why should we do these demographic polls at all, and raised the issue of privacy concerns.
As to the why question, the simple answer is "know thyself." Who are we when we spout off and comment? Also, it can be fun. It also helps the discussion of whatever the topic is. And yes, maybe it will be reported by other media or be used to market advertising to the site.
As to the privacy concerns, Kos has certainly made clear his strong views against "outing" the real identities of anybody. I do not know what access the site administrators have to the data or linkages of usernames to poll responses. Myself, I am just a regular user, and have nothing to do with administration or behind the scenes here. I don't know who has voted or what age goes with whom. All I have is the same bar graph and diary that is publicly visible. Also, there are no cross-tabs between any variables. It is not like a questionnaire with multiple separate questions per single interviewee. I guess the question is a matter of what the site administrators COULD access and link or identify if they were so inclined, whether they WOULD do so; and what protections are there on system to prevent an outsider from doing so? Clearly if there were a serious break of confidentiality/privacy, the Kos community would react very badly. The simple answer is, if you are that concerned, with this or any other issue, then do not participate; don't vote. This is a voluntary poll, within one of many diaries, among the nearly infinite number of webpages you can browse.
Remember too, that the way dKos polls work, the answers are mutually exclusive and there is a limit of 15 categories. Also, once published, unlike diaries, the poll question itself cannot be edited (so if I make a mitsake mistake I cannot change it. Sorry in advance).
I stopped doing them because I thought I was running out of interesting topics. Also the number of voting poll participants, and interest as shown by comments and Recs, was dropping.
Whatever degree of validity the poll percentages have is improved by the diary and poll being up and available in the Recommended list throughout the day, from early morning in the East coast through the evening West coast time. It is not a matter of my ego. Just a matter of giving all types of people, from early morning users in the east to late evening accessers in the west, equal opportunity to vote, and so minimize the potential for selection bias.
So what do y'all think?
My hope is to bring them back now, since the community has grown and perhaps changed? With the "primary wars" we are perhaps at the height of interest and activity, and it will be useful and interesting to know who we are now. And, it will be nice to have a brek from too many of those "your candidate sucks" diaries.
I will try for a few weeks in a row, repeating the basic social-demographics. If interest is not strong, I will stop and try again after we have a candidate. Meanwhile do browse the old ones (I suggest scroll down to bottom of list and work your way up), see what the topics were, suggest new topics.
Who are we?
Daily Kos Community... Know thyself.
So hold old are you?
What does that mean for you personally
What does that mean politically in general?
What does that mean for your participation in Daily Kos?
Discuss.
Comment.
Peace & Health
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Update: It is after 1pm Eastern time, and the poll (and comments) are still going strong, though still far from the 11,700 we had before. c'mon ;). I believe the community is saying lets keep doing these. So, I will continue the re-do's -- of Sex, Race, Region, Urban-Rural, etc. -- putting them up each Tuesday morning over the next several weeks. Come on by.
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Per commenter below:
The central limit theorem has absolutely nothing to do with why histogram is bell-curve shaped. Why? Because not sampling infinitely from a set of averages. It just happens that people on Daily Kos are middle aged and that there are few elderly and extremely young people. This may have a lot to do with mortality and literacy ages, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the CLT. .
or as somebody else chimed in: "If it ain't averages, it ain't convergin' "
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It would still be great if this poll stayed up at least well into the evening West coast time for full access, maximum representativeness, increased potential validity, etc. So if you have just come to it, and think it is useful, you should stil Rec it.