A few minutes ago, I got a call from the Gallup organization, asking me to participate in the poll - living alone I passed their criterion for participating, it was undeniable that I was the person in my household who had the next birthday.
The first question asked, on a scale of zero to ten where on that scale would I place the quality of my life, zero the worst, ten the best quality of life I could imagine.
The pollster wasn't prepared for my total inability to understand what the question was asking. I've never imagined such a scale and doubt I could place my "quality of life" on one, even if not required to on the fly in about ten seconds. Thought I'm sure that asking me first thing in the morning would get a radically different answer than asking in the afternoon. I might even be prepared to give a baseless, thoughtless, meaningless answer on another day of the week. Though I can't imagine doing that, either.
She didn't waste much time with me when I told her I couldn't answer the question. I wish I'd asked her how many of those they asked said they couldn't answer and how many said they could and what it could possibly mean to the range of people who gave them a number. Not to mention the grounds for coming up with one. This question, typical of polling, it seems, is total BS which could tell you absolutely nothing, though going through the motions of doing the calculations of the "data" would be child-play. Thus is the "science" of polling that replaces the "news" in our freest press of all times.
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