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hian

Yes, that would be wrong. I'm trying to establish that the opposite of trust is distrust, but not trusting someone is not the same as actively distrusting them, which is something that should be clarified.
You have phrased it as if "not trusting", implies active distrust. I disagree.

I base this on your opening post, where you said:

In this post, you imply, or directly state depending on how you look at it, that the you're looking for two sides of the spectrum considering the trustworthiness of the U.S government.

The one side being trusting the policies of the government, the other one being the exact opposite, namely a distrust of the government.

Your reply to my first post seemes to reinforce this, since you, as I pointed out, made a point of saying that there is no middle ground in terms of trust, which you now with this post seems to go back on.

Now which is it?

This section of your post is more or less completely irrelevant to what I wrote, and doesn't go into anything of importance in regards to my stance.

I completely understand your poll and your question, but I reject it as good research methodology because you've opted out the a very real, and possibly important part of the demography, which would be people on the fence, who don't consider the U.S government to be very trustworthy, nor very untrustworthy, but as an average government with both good and bad sides.

Your question is formulated in such a way that it will scew the view we get of public opinion, because the people who don't feel strongly one way or the other, won't be represented.

That's the point I was trying to raise. In fact, it baffles me that you would try to defend yourself, and claim that you're interested in results, when you've left out a very important part of the relevant demography.

I know you didn't "dream up", as you put it, the question - And I'm aware how generic it is. In fact it is even generic in its flaws, which is reminiscent of the flaws you often find in the polls of political talking points in the media made to influence people and twist the accuracy of the trends of society, rather than to be of any scientific merit, or statistical usefullness.

You can try to distance yourself from this, and say it hasn't got anything with you and how you see things, and that is fine. This is not an attack on your opinions regarding politics - However, you raised the poll, and you're the one who says you're interested in the opinions of the people of these forums.

I gave you my opinion: My opinion is that your poll lacks an important choice for an essential and relevant part of the demography you're questioning, and as such is lacking. Furthermore, I postulate that the reason for this is because, as you seemed to indicate with your previous post, you discard the middleway is somehow being an impossible stance.

Now you come back, completely change your approach, and act is if your previous post was never written, and that the problem here is that I didn't get your purpose for making the poll.

I find that slightly disconcerning, even with your apology.

Are you really that unwilling to concede that your poll might give a more complete picture, if you added an option for people who don't feel strongly either way?

Duly noted, and duly detracted :P

Bear in mind though that I haven't said that the question in your poll isn't answerable. I was talking on behalf of myself. I cannot give an yes or no answer to your poll. You're poll does not take into account people like me, who don't think the U.S government is particularly trustfull, nor particularly distrustfull - In light of that, I think that the poll is lacking because it won't provide an accurate view of how people in general view the U.S government in light of trust.
It will give you a polarized answer, where a part of the demography will either refrain from answering altogether, or force themselves into a camp they don't really belong to simply because no other alternative is provided.

It's the same with voting. A lot of people don't vote because they're lazy - However, some people, like me, don't vote because they don't feel that any of the parties represent our ideas or our growth, that they lack much needed competance, and that we ought to demonstrate our disatisfaction by not letting a poor selection force us into picking inferior choices.

The day parties are monitored and quality checked in terms of relevant education and work experience, and when voters monitored and and quality checked through test result and physche evaluations, is the only day I'm going to vote - Because it's the only day where I'm convinced my vote will count, and stand or fall on its intellectual value, rather than being counter-acted by a bunch of dimwits who vote for parties they don't even know what stands for to begin with.

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Ronin

A quick answer to add some comparison, that I didn't draw beforehand, but that I took more or less as given:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/122915/Tr...s-New-Low.aspx

I see no "dunno" there. I don't think "duno" provides any answers and surveyors seem to agree.

There are millions of trust indicator polls that where first made completely so that the surveyed would not know what is going on, so that they would be able to present the context necessary to statistically evaluate if their result is a representation or not.

I did not do that, because I am not trying to get a PhD with this poll.

I just asked the question in brevity. Why? Because the sample is low and individual.

There is imo nothing wrong with my questions. If it's safe to say for the main surveyors that you can use their data to construct an answer to the question I can ask it too.

I think the criticism comes from a point that can be universally applied to any question whatsoever. I can't really defend the poll on it's own, out of the context I see it in, so if you see it as flawed, thank you for the input.
I don't see that i slacked and I really do not see it as flawed when I look over it again.

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