First off, a hat tip where a hat tip is due: To Queer Channel Media for apparently doing a bit more investigatory journalism on the HRC ‘poll.’
Anyone with functioning brain cells in the portion of the brain that governs ethics has already self-acknowledged that the HRC ‘poll’ was a pile of shit excreted by the Scampaign and spread around by the Shamvocate. Now, however…
Polling experts are questioning a recent Human Rights Campaign survey that asked gays about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
The survey’s results, circulated last month by HRC when many gays were locked in heated debate over the measure’s lack of transgender protections, show most people who responded support the bill as written.
But John Stahura, who specializes in survey research and directs the Purdue University Social Research Institute, said the survey’s methodology is problematic.
“They’re playing games,” he said after reviewing survey excerpts at the Blade’s request. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The temptation is to say, “Duh!” – and to say it loudly.
Of course, it really did make sense to anyone who was willing to acknowledge not only how morally bankrupt the well-monied gay rights industrial monolith actually is but the extent to which it will take that moral bankruptcy out of the field of theory and put it into action: It was pure fraud designed to coerce into an Oath o’ Barney-Fealty just enough of a GLBT populace that actually did – and does – want trans-inclusion but also doesn’t want the movement to implode if inclusion isn’t possible.
Conning the people into accepting a fake reality….
That’s never happened, has it?
[HRC communications director Brad] Luna said HRC is confident in the work that Knowledge Networks performs.
“While all surveys have limitations, Knowledge Networks surveys are very high in quality,” he said. “They have a stellar reputation, and I have full confidence in their work.”
Uh huh.
I bet he has “full confidence” in HRC’s claims that it has helped ‘educate’ on trans issues.
But, don’t look now…
Someone else doesn’t have full confidence in that ‘poll’:
“I don’t know based upon this response that you could say how the community — the gay, lesbian, bisexual community — feels about the legislation,” Stahura said. “I don’t think those questions give you that answer.”
Christopher Barron, a Washington political consultant Log Cabin’s former political director, who is gay and does survey interpretation, agreed. He said the methodology, which he described as “bizarre,” might not allow the results to be projected nationally.
“It may be that it’s completely and totally sound,” he said. “But there’s nothing there that tells us that it is, so you can’t assume it’s a nationally representative sample.”
Luna told the Blade this week that the survey is nationally representative.
Well, HRC says on the front page of its website that it is “working for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equal rights,” but that doesn’t make it so.
Barron and Stahura, who reviewed a two-page memorandum and three data sets prepared by Knowledge Networks and provided to the Blade, also noted they could not determine whether the survey is scientific.
Both experts said that lingering question would preclude them from using the survey’s findings in their work.
“I would not approve it for publication,” Stahura said. “I think with the ‘becauses,’ you’re really pushing people toward particular responses in this instance.”
Luna disagreed. He said there was “never any intent to influence survey respondents.”
“We wanted to gain an understanding as best we could of where people were on the issue,” he said. “A number of voices were claiming to speak for the LGBT population, but no one in fact had done the research to know.”
Never any intent to influence survey respondents?
Just when you think the Scampaign has set forth the most preposterous proposition that it possibly could….
Posted by Katrina Rose 
ENDAblog 