Confusing surveys - Chasing the Wind by Felipe B. Miranda

Far too many people, often even those presumably among the smartest in this country, are confused by surveys. Several reasons account for this state of mind. Not all of the reasons speak well of our confused people and many of these reasons also could reflect badly on those who do the surveys, the pollsters. In two articles, starting with this one, this columnist will try to look into what makes for confusion and how to deal with it.

Actually, for those who truly wish to avoid being confused, there is good and relatively fast-acting therapies with enduring results.

All that is needed is a resolve not to be confused, a truly honest look at oneself and others and a determination not to confuse one’s worthy self with either childish egotism or senescent infallibility. It would also help much if one understood democracy as a way of life where no one presumes to have a monopoly on the making of errors, much less the making of correct decisions in how society governs itself democratically.

One of the possible sources of confusion is the nature itself of the phenomenon being monitored. Most people would rather that when anything is studied, some characteristic stability attaches to the object of study. When considering Mount Everest or the Philippine Deep, the perfect cone which is Mayon Volcano from a given perspective, or the series of faults which is characteristic of this nation’s geologic topography, a person deals with something enduring and therefore psychologically reassuring. Overnight, across the months and years, even across a hundred thousand years if one could live that long, one can be comfortable in the knowledge that what has been probably would continue to be. One only has to know that one is concerned with Mount Everest, the Philippine Deep, Mount Mayon and the Philippine Faults, one need not be unduly worried that within the one’s lifetime, anything could drastically change.

Not much confusion can attend this kind of lasting phenomena. In relation to them one can only have knowledge and the rational faith that they will persist in a person’s or a nation’s lifetime. Of course one can also have deplorable ignorance – the incredible absence of knowledge relating to even some of the most basic things in life – in which for many people there could also be much bliss. But there is no significant possibility of confusion here, whether one knows or does not know about everyone’s Everest, our much-renowned Deep, our much-owned Mayon, and our very own Faults. Only knowledge and ignorance.

Confusion intrudes more easily when one deals with dynamic and especially dramatically changing phenomena. As when one tries to reckon with the perceptions, opinions, sentiments and beliefs of a people who had largely been invisible except as passive, highly manipulable objects or – at best – romanticized subjects of constitutional rhetoric in a country’s demonstrably undemocratic history.

When such people somehow finally start discovering themselves – their resources and strengths – and the legitimacy of their claims to a better and more humane life, it is inevitable that democratization will dynamize them and they will exert pressures for dramatic changes to take place in their society. Such dynamism will confuse those who insist on reading this people as they historically had been – passive, predictable and manipulable.

This unanticipated dynamism leads the awakened people to gather their voices and demand that they be heard. For this to happen, they need a reliable outlet, one probably less compromised than other available modalities for democratic projection.

In competently done, academically viable opinion surveys, Filipinos have recently found the requisite outlet for their historically much subdued, often much distorted democratic voice or, more properly, voices. No longer do they have to rely on a select elite – whether aristocratic, authoritarian or simply fascist – to represent their opinions, sentiments and convictions regarding anything or anyone in their society. No longer can partisan elites – whether political, economic or religious – arrogantly speak for the mass of Filipinos without reckoning with the possibility that an embarrassingly contradictory public opinion survey might dispute their confident claims.

Not even mighty media – that powerful and often ungovernable de facto branch of modern governments – have easily adjusted to the entry of public opinion surveys. Dominated by strong personalities and often with strong political and economic interests to protect, much of media reflect a terrific struggle among media people who truly believe in the right of the people to know and those who simply believe in what they adjudge the people must know. The latter kind of media people are not generically distinguishable from ordinary politicians or public relations experts.

Across so many years – decades – some of the more influential media people in this country have failed to keep abreast of democratizing technologies, among which academic opinion surveys must be included. Not understanding the capabilities and limitations of properly conducted opinion surveys, they have resorted to using opinion surveys in a perhaps pragmatic but often irresponsible way. (That is to say, pretty much the same way pragmatic politicians would use surveys too.)

When surveys are aligned with, or ìconfirmî, the pet ideas and magnificent theses of these media personalities, the surveys are assiduously cited and those behind the surveys extolled for their professionalism and credibility. On the other hand, when survey findings dispute their favored readings, the same surveyors are excoriated and their motivations impugned as being mercenary.

One source of confusion must therefore be situated in the very partisan selectiveness of some eminent authority who considers survey findings. On this score, there is little difference in acknowledging the purportedly ìconfusedî individual as being a politician, a businessman, a member of any religious denomination or one who might have the biggest reputation among media people.

What one has in this case is merely pragmatic, utilitarian or convenient confusion. This author’s next column will deal with a better kind of confusion, one that is a regrettable but nevertheless honest state of mind. This kind of confusion can be productively addressed.