As I was driving around last night, I heard the snipped of the discussion on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell survey on NPR. It seems that John McCain felt the survey was missing one key question “Should the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Law be repealed?”
I was in the middle of something and didn’t hear the whole story – but this little comment was bothering me and I wanted to ask our expert community what you thought?
You can actually look at the survey questionnaire here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https://www.militarytimes.com/webtools/files/Survey%2520questionnaire.pdf
You can see that they’ve asked just about every question under the sun — but the most obvious question of whether the law should be repealed or not.
If finding out whether the law should be repealed or not was an objective of the survey — then is there an error in not asking the question outright a big mistake?
Is it safe to make inferences about what to do with a law based on the survey and the results we currently have?
Why I’m asking?
I’m always going on and on about how the whole purpose of a survey is to help you make decisions. In this case, we’ve got a HUGE organization doing a survey on a big and important topic.
They didn’t say if it was to make this decision — but by the sounds of it, it seems like they are using the survey to justify a decision.
So it’s your turn — let your expert market researcher flag fly!
