Results from a recent Harris poll caught my attention this morning, and I know my readers are always ready for shocking results – and why should I keep from passing them along just because someone else did the polling!-)
Read on to find out what the poll is saying – and not saying – about the topic.
Numbers and such
I found this interesting – many many web sites are covering the “news” about Harris’ poll, but I was unable to find one that actually linked back to the online poll article at Harris. It’s as if the actual poll results are unimportant, but the hype about the results is incredibly important.
And of course – I want you to be able to get there, so here it is:
Harris’ poll “Gay and Lesbian Adults Are More Likely and More Frequent Blog Readers”
Gosh that must be true!
And if Harris says it, the results must be correct.
Their poll reveals that 54% of self identified Gay and Lesbian Adults say that they read blogs versus 40% of other Adults.
Now when we turn to the percentage of Heterosexuals that read personal blogs daily, that comes in at 24%, versus the 20% of Gay and Lesbian Adults – hmmm… I guess that wasn’t one statistic they wanted to talk about.
Oh – there it is – 29% of Gay and Lesbian Adults read entertainment blogs daily versus 16% of Heterosexual Adults.
Use of LinkedIn
And yes – there is is – 22% of Gay and Lesbian Adults use LinkedIn versus 16% of Heterosexual Adults.
And still – if we read closer, we find added detail that was not revealed…
24% of Gay Adults (which I take to mean men) use LinkedIn versus just 18% of Lesbian Adults (which I take to mean women) – so gay men are 33% more likely to use LinkedIn than lesbian women, and lesbian women really are pretty darned close to average!
I wonder what the percentage difference is between heterosexual adults on that same question – but alas, Harris does not break down the male / female statistics for heterosexuals.
But Wait!
There’s more!
Surely the use of twitter is an interesting statistic – but I’m not going to talk about the differences between those with different sexual preferences, I’m going to talk about the use of twitter among heterosexuals.
You see, Harris includes statistics from (hopefully) an identical poll from May 2009 – and at that time 87% of Heterosexual Adults reported that they were members of twitter!
And a year later in June of 2010, only 84% of the people in that same category said that they were members of twitter!
Yes – the level of Twitter membership among heterosexual adults dropped three percent!!!
Except it didn’t
So let’s look at the two unbelievable portions of this question.
First – that the percentage of the population that uses twitter is declining.
This is just so far fetched that you should recognize it as a warning sign. I find no evidence that twitter use is declining in any way – it is still growing. (perhaps at a slower level, but it is still growing)
Second – that anywhere near 84% or 87% of heterosexual adults are members of twitter.
Come on – twitter reported membership in April of this year at 105 million – and 60% of twitter accounts are from outside the US! The Us Bureau of Statistics reports over 300 million people in the US (and a good number of them must be heterosexual adults)…
Hopefully we can all see that the math does not work out.
If you polled a representative sample of people across the US, you would not find 84-87% of them saying that they were members of twitter.
Therefore, the Harris sample was not representative…
Polls are great – if you know what to expect
Hey – I can hardly wait for the end of the month – to tell you all about how “new” readers of this blog are to the US.
Haven’t taken the poll yet? You’ll find it over there in the right hand bar – along with other useful stuff.
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock