By Samir Abu Rumman, PhD
Often, significant mistakes in our lives are employed negatively, seen as black marks and sources of frustration and failure. Yet, if viewed from another perspective, they could be the opposite entirely: opportunities for development, improvement, and positive change, perhaps in ways that wouldn't have happened without those mistakes!
This belief was reinforced as I listened to Dr. Michael A. Bailey from Georgetown University presenting his book Polling at a Crossroads: Rethinking Modern Survey Research organized by Princeton University's Survey Research Center, focusing on the challenges and opportunities facing modern polling research with the evolving nature of survey methods, the impact of technology on data collection, and the need for innovative approaches to obtaining accurate results!
The author Dr. Michaeal Bailey provides proposals and methodological tools for researchers, scientists, and practitioners in the field of social sciences to contribute to the development and improvement of opinion polls by focusing on sample quality and accuracy. But what caught my attention most during the lecture, were the historical mistakes that occurred during the course of public opinion measurements, which seem limited compared to perhaps 90% of successes in public opinion research. One of these mistakes, often presented to researchers and scholars in public opinion research, is a motivating image to avoid repeating the error: a picture of former US President Harry Truman following his victory in the 1948 presidential elections, mockingly holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which hastily announced the election results with its front page headline "Dewey Defeats Truman," relying on the public opinion polls of the time predicting Dewey as the winner. The image circulated widely like wildfire, even being displayed among many expressive images in the political science department at Princeton University.
This painting although symbolizing failure and counts among what I have seen as one of the three major failures in the history of public opinion research, is repeatedly used, in many places and situations, by scientists working in this field as a means of motivation to avoid people making the same error as in the past. Such mistakes, failures, and historical setbacks actually become an opportunity for review, improvement, positive change, not only in our field of public opinion research but in all areas of life, professional, vocational, research, and even personally.
This article was first published in Arabic in Alanba daily newspaper and translated first in English on Generation1.ca.
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