Week 5: Reading Response 1

Bositis/Skin Deep: What Polls of Minorities Miss

2. What are the challenges of polling minority communities adequately?

Specific reasons given in paragraph 6 and 7 showed that a higher standard is costly because polling per interview is expensive, they make up a smaller proportion of the population, and the population is difficult to reach. Also, an additional effort made to find suitable interviewees and make language translation for respondents adds to the cost of surveying as well. Translation takes time and extra effort in any given situation and is a point well taken.

David Bositis’s point that poll sampling can be misleading on minority populations is very convincing when polling efforts are based on a certain proportion of the population. The variances in and between populations are at best “have large margin of error.” The “argument to convince” is an ethical appeal to “what polls of minorities are missing.” If polls are missing important information, and only surveying people of choice, how are polls accurately represented?

The reading was very interesting. I particularly appreciated the footnotes expanding on the definitions and meaning of words, and groups of words. The oversimplified opinion David Bositis puts forward concerning polls of communities of color or the minorities are evident by the media today. I will look at polls a little closer now, and with pessimism. However, it will all depend on the kind of poll taken, and whether or not it was taken twice. Overall, his message obviously won me over convincing me that poll takers of any kind should do a better job and not stereotype.