RE: Political Test
August 30, 2016 at 3:47 pm
(This post was last modified: August 30, 2016 at 3:55 pm by GUBU.)
I'm in the middle of answering the questions right now, and the test is to my mind, horrifically designed. My problems with it:
1) Vaguely worded questions which are far too open ended, e.g. "The infrastructure works best, if the responsibility lies with competing undertakings." I understand this question to mean "is competition a good thing in all areas?" but frankly the wording is so bad and ungrammatical that you could probably argue for any definition of the question you want. Or take, "It would be good for the public authorities to pay their debts no longer." What is this I don't even... Frankly if the original framer of this test is that bad at English she shouldn't have bothered (or gotten the services of a translator).
2) The answers are badly framed: "I fully agree; I agree in part; neutral; I disagree; I strongly disagree". First of all, if you're looking for opinion it's generally a bad idea to give a neutral response, it gives an easy out for those who don't want to formulate an answer. Second the agree/disagree answers aren't symmetrical, for example the middle disagreement is a total one whereas the middle agreement is partial, and the outright agreement and disagreement have adverbs which don't match correctly (she should have used fully or strongly for both not one for each). That will prejudice your answers.
3) Too many questions are repeated. I've answered five questions on religion all of which are variations on the same question, viz "should the state be secular or have a religious basis?". Repeating your question over and over will just lead to extreme polars showing more often than they should.
4) There are questions where the answer is obvious. For example "Redistribution should happen from the top to the bottom." when taken at face value should have only one response, "of course, it'd be stupid to expect poor people to pay for stuff they don't use". What I think the question is meant to ask is "should the state intervene to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor?"
5) Outright misleading questions: "We should reduce our living standards massively to protect the environment." Putting the word "massively" will prejudice answers to this question automatically. Now we may need to make massive changes to our way of life to stave off global warming, but asking a question like that in a survey is pretty much a red flag that the questioner is deliberately looking to skew their results in a certain way. Another example "Even small delicts should be punished rigorously to prevent rampant crime." Leading question.
Completing the test it calls me social democrat with a score of:
http://politicaltest.net/en/test/image/110656
Now what stops me from being a "cosmopolitan" social democrat? The fact that I think humanity has a responsibility to the general environment? The fact that I'm more lefty than Divinity? Oh and I answered all the religious questions as perfect secularist yet I don't get a perfect score there?
This survey isn't worth a shit.
Edit: By the way, I'm out and out socialist (though I do see a point in allowing for profit organisations to provide wants). For example last time I took the political compass test, I scored a -9.5;-10.0, pretty much as far left libertarian you can get.
1) Vaguely worded questions which are far too open ended, e.g. "The infrastructure works best, if the responsibility lies with competing undertakings." I understand this question to mean "is competition a good thing in all areas?" but frankly the wording is so bad and ungrammatical that you could probably argue for any definition of the question you want. Or take, "It would be good for the public authorities to pay their debts no longer." What is this I don't even... Frankly if the original framer of this test is that bad at English she shouldn't have bothered (or gotten the services of a translator).
2) The answers are badly framed: "I fully agree; I agree in part; neutral; I disagree; I strongly disagree". First of all, if you're looking for opinion it's generally a bad idea to give a neutral response, it gives an easy out for those who don't want to formulate an answer. Second the agree/disagree answers aren't symmetrical, for example the middle disagreement is a total one whereas the middle agreement is partial, and the outright agreement and disagreement have adverbs which don't match correctly (she should have used fully or strongly for both not one for each). That will prejudice your answers.
3) Too many questions are repeated. I've answered five questions on religion all of which are variations on the same question, viz "should the state be secular or have a religious basis?". Repeating your question over and over will just lead to extreme polars showing more often than they should.
4) There are questions where the answer is obvious. For example "Redistribution should happen from the top to the bottom." when taken at face value should have only one response, "of course, it'd be stupid to expect poor people to pay for stuff they don't use". What I think the question is meant to ask is "should the state intervene to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor?"
5) Outright misleading questions: "We should reduce our living standards massively to protect the environment." Putting the word "massively" will prejudice answers to this question automatically. Now we may need to make massive changes to our way of life to stave off global warming, but asking a question like that in a survey is pretty much a red flag that the questioner is deliberately looking to skew their results in a certain way. Another example "Even small delicts should be punished rigorously to prevent rampant crime." Leading question.
Completing the test it calls me social democrat with a score of:
http://politicaltest.net/en/test/image/110656
Now what stops me from being a "cosmopolitan" social democrat? The fact that I think humanity has a responsibility to the general environment? The fact that I'm more lefty than Divinity? Oh and I answered all the religious questions as perfect secularist yet I don't get a perfect score there?
This survey isn't worth a shit.
Edit: By the way, I'm out and out socialist (though I do see a point in allowing for profit organisations to provide wants). For example last time I took the political compass test, I scored a -9.5;-10.0, pretty much as far left libertarian you can get.
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