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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Aug 20

Guys today is a red-letter day for bad survey questions. Look at this lovely double negative that just rolled in!

I never buy luxury brands inconsistent with the characteristics with which I describe myself (seven point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree)

Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Aug 20

Good question! (1) requires too much cognitive work to parse what it's asking for, (2) too much abstract thinking, (3) poorly differentiated response options (e.g. good chance vs strong chance)

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Aug 20

The actual survey had probably 20 versions of this question. I almost never satisfice on surveys but I lacked the cognitive focus to interpret each one. Sorry, researchers.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Aug 20

for everyone teaching survey design this fall, great news: a new terrible question example just dropped! (this is from a real survey I just took) 😱

Survey question reading "When deciding whether to pursue a new long-term goal, what is the chance you will overestimate how challenging it will be to achieve?" Answer options: No chance, very slight chance, slight chance, moderate chance, good chance, strong chance, certain

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Aug 19

same. just gonna go ahead and put it all on my FSA card.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Jul 17

Or, even worse, accurate.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Jul 16

From a Washington Post reader survey I just took. What a bizarre list of job titles. Also I love the idea that it's critically important to distinguish between the Presidents and Vice Presidents among their readership. TOTALLY different news preferences.

Survey question asking which of the following best describes your current job title or role, options like "Vice President," "General Manager," and "Individual Contributor"

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 29

this made me laugh out loud in the middle of a meeting

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 29

I'm excited for what I hope will be an increase in LLM-assisted descriptive content analysis...especially looking forward to when someone (who is not me) looks at the topics of news coverage across multiple outlets and time periods.

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Reposted by Emily Thorson

Jon Green @jongreen.bsky.social · May 14

great call — more experiments and within-subject panels / less emphasis on what the national topline happens to be today while worrying about whether it got the sample right feels like a worthwhile trade for the public polling industry

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · May 14

Rare for a public poll, we did a survey experiment to test whether priming respondents about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia impacts support for Trump's broader immigration agenda. It does. Support for blanket deportations fell 20 points after hearing about Garcia's case.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 7

Agreed. I think they are often BETTER when they hand-write than when they type because they don't try to fancy it up and instead write more like they speak.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 7

I switched to blue books a few years ago. It's fine! Student handwriting is mostly readable, the score distributions are similar, they have not lost the ability to write or concentrate or form coherent sentences. Students who need accommodations take at at our CDR, easy-peasy.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 7

I think figuring out concrete strategies to deal with it is the opposite of letting down one's guard. It's acknowledging that it's a game changer and figuring out how to adapt.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · May 7

I'm pretty over the doomsaying/complaining about AI and student learning and interested in moving on to the "solutions" part. In-class writing (by hand!) exercises, non-generic paper topics, etc. We can adapt! It might even be fun!

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Apr 9

[starts going through all of Drew's coauthors so I can figure out who to high-five at the next APSA]

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Apr 3

There is NOTHING on the front page of Fox News about the stock market crash. Nothing at all.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Apr 1

(screenshot taken from the linked paper by @vinarceneaux.bsky.social @m-b-petersen.bsky.social and Mathias Osmundsen)

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Apr 1

Pretty horrifying how well the "need for chaos" survey battery describes the Trump/Musk administration's current approach to governing. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Mar 18

Also I love that you made a PDF blog.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Mar 18

I totally missed this (this is what happens when you log onto Bluesky only once every six weeks). And yes, I was assuming variation to measure causal effects -- I guess I shouldn't have said "descriptive" when what I meant was "causal inference that is not aimed only at 'proving' a 'theory'"

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Mar 18

Work that looks at "who pays attention to what" definitely exists (much more in comm than in PSC, unsurprisingly -- I mean, the ELM is basically about attention) but it's a very scattered literature where the pieces rarely speak to each other.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Mar 18

And the fact that the discipline only rewards causal inference and new theories, not descriptive work. It would not be hard to do a large-N study where participants browse a website and you vary communicator/topic/etc, with the DV being attention. We'd learn a lot. But "where's the novel theory"? 🙄

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Feb 5

This is why every political scientist you know has been in a state of panic for the past week. This isn't about policy disagreement, it's about the Constitution being destroyed before our very eyes.

Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · Feb 5

My depressing thought for the day: it seems increasingly inevitable that quite soon, Trump decides to simply disregard a court finding that some of his actions are illegal or unconstitutional. Impeachment is attempted & fails thanks to loyal Republicans. At which point there are no good options.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Feb 5

Regardless of your party, is this the future you want for America? Is this the future that the founders wanted? Please contact your elected officials. Tell them that you want to keep this extraordinary democracy we have built.

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Emily Thorson @emilythorson.bsky.social · Feb 5

This is precisely what is happening in the Trump administration. His actions are unconstitutional. Do we want to live in a world where the President, and whoever he appoints, can simply decide what gets funding without Congressional approval?

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