Census brouhaha

Since everyone else is talking about the census, I figured I would weigh in as well.

I consider myself to be somewhat libertarian, so I appreciate the argument that the census, at least to some extent, is an invasion of privacy. One has to admit that some of the questions might make some people a little uncomfortable to answer (even if they only have to answer it, on average, once every 25 years).

On the other side of the coin, however, replacing the long-form census with a voluntary survey generates data that is of much lower quality. The people who choose not to respond may tend to have similar characteristics, and if the survey no longer picks up their data, the results will be skewed. Even after the voluntary long-form survey is conducted, we won't be able to know how bad the problem is.

Hamburgers and sampling bias

I ate lunch at Harvey's yesterday. The last time I ate there was about three years ago, when their chocolate milkshake made me quite sick. But I got hungry while shopping at the Home Depot, and since there was a Harvey's right in the store, I figured I'd give them another chance. Thankfully, I did not get sick this time (I avoided the chocolate milkshake), but the meal was still pretty disappointing and the service was slow.

While I was eating, I noticed a request for feedback on the receipt. You can complete a survey by going online or calling a 1-800 number. There was an incentive for completing the survey: I'd be entered in a bi-weekly draw for a $500 Harvey's gift certificate.

Add sneezing to the list

Recently, I blogged about how lemon-scented Windex and AC-DC music can affect the results of economic experiments. We can now add another factor to that list: sneezing.

Researchers in Michigan found that a pollster who sneezed before handing over a survey about health led to lower approval of the American health care system and predictions of lower health outcomes for Americans by survey respondents than when the pollster didn't sneeze.

Thanks to the Freakonomics blog for this one.

Are government employees more selfish?

One difference between left wingers and right wingers are their views of whether government or the private sector are better placed to offer services to citizens. Left wingers tend to be suspicious of businesses and more trusting of government, while right wingers tend to feel the opposite.

So perhaps a worthwhile question to ask is whether people running governments are any different than people running businesses. The answer is "yes," according to a recent study by Dutch researchers Margaretha Buurman, Robert Dur and Seth Van den Bossche.