Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Have you ever been to Winston - Salem? I mean, it is pretty bad.
According to the data not as bad as Charleston and Huntington. Literally, and I mean literally, they are the most miserable, depressed, and worst well being in the US.
In other news College towns had the best well being.
According to the data not as bad as Charleston and Huntington. Literally, and I mean literally, they are the most miserable, depressed, and worst well being in the US.
In other news College towns had the best well being.
College towns are excellent for residents on many counts. I can certainly see that. That is why my wife and I retired in Morgantown.
Okay let's do this. First: all of this information can be found on the original article under "Survey Methods." Please reference it.
The sample size for this survey is TERRIBLE. They only surveyed a total of 353,363 people living in the United States from 163 out of a total of 388 MSAs. That is 0.112% of the entire population and less than half of the total number of MSAs in the country. So this means that about only 0.151% of about 233,165,185 (this is the total number of people in the 163 MSAs surveyed) people were survey. That speaks for itself as a terrible representation.
Gallup also said that they surveyed a minimum of 300 people per MSA. With 0.151% of the population being the mean survey size, it must be assumed that they surveyed between 300-554 people in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA (0.082-0.151% of the MSA) and 300-364 people in the Charleston MSA (0.125-0.151% of the MSA.) Those numbers would be a bad representation of a place even the size of Parkersburg or Wheeling, let alone their complete respective MSAs.
To put this into perspective, there are about 120 cities, towns, villages, townships, census-designated place, and/or communities in general in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA. That can be interpreted that they surveyed anywhere between 2-5 people per community. Now I am sure that Gallup surveyed more than 5 people in Huntington alone, so that means that some communities outside of Huntington were probably not sampled at all and thus unrepresented. Some of those small communities that managed to be sampled may have only had 1-2 people surveyed and Huntington could have only had 20-50 people surveyed. Aside from neither of those being a good sample size for a representation of their respective areas, they can be easily skewed. If 50 people from Huntington are surveyed and found to be 80% happy and healthy (40 people), then even 100 unhappy people from Lawrence, Boyd, Greenup, Wayne, Putnam, or Lincoln counties could seriously skew the results (Note: I am not saying these areas are unhappy or unhealthy, but simply giving a hypothetical example.)
Gallup says that for their smallest MSAs (which Huntington-Ashland-Ironton and Charleston are grouped in), the standard deviation can be as much as +/-6.5 percentage points. This alone throws off the entire poll considering that the difference between the first and last ranked MSAs are only 12 percentage points apart. The Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA and the Charleston MSA could very well be right in the middle and have an average well-being rating.
Finally, this Gallup poll also states that, "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."
Okay let's do this. First: all of this information can be found on the original article under "Survey Methods." Please reference it.
The sample size for this survey is TERRIBLE. They only surveyed a total of 353,363 people living in the United States from 163 out of a total of 388 MSAs. That is 0.112% of the entire population and less than half of the total number of MSAs in the country. So this means that about only 0.151% of about 233,165,185 (this is the total number of people in the 163 MSAs surveyed) people were survey. That speaks for itself as a terrible representation.
Gallup also said that they surveyed a minimum of 300 people per MSA. With 0.151% of the population being the mean survey size, it must be assumed that they surveyed between 300-554 people in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA (0.082-0.151% of the MSA) and 300-364 people in the Charleston MSA (0.125-0.151% of the MSA.) Those numbers would be a bad representation of a place even the size of Parkersburg or Wheeling, let alone their complete respective MSAs.
To put this into perspective, there are about 120 cities, towns, villages, townships, census-designated place, and/or communities in general in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA. That can be interpreted that they surveyed anywhere between 2-5 people per community. Now I am sure that Gallup surveyed more than 5 people in Huntington alone, so that means that some communities outside of Huntington were probably not sampled at all and thus unrepresented. Some of those small communities that managed to be sampled may have only had 1-2 people surveyed and Huntington could have only had 20-50 people surveyed. Aside from neither of those being a good sample size for a representation of their respective areas, they can be easily skewed. If 50 people from Huntington are surveyed and found to be 80% happy and healthy (40 people), then even 100 unhappy people from Lawrence, Boyd, Greenup, Wayne, Putnam, or Lincoln counties could seriously skew the results (Note: I am not saying these areas are unhappy or unhealthy, but simply giving a hypothetical example.)
Gallup says that for their smallest MSAs (which Huntington-Ashland-Ironton and Charleston are grouped in), the standard deviation can be as much as +/-6.5 percentage points. This alone throws off the entire poll considering that the difference between the first and last ranked MSAs are only 12 percentage points apart. The Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA and the Charleston MSA could very well be right in the middle and have an average well-being rating.
Finally, this Gallup poll also states that, "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."
You're wasting your finger joints typing all this - I pointed most of this out to no avail earlier in this thread.
Okay let's do this. First: all of this information can be found on the original article under "Survey Methods." Please reference it.
The sample size for this survey is TERRIBLE. They only surveyed a total of 353,363 people living in the United States from 163 out of a total of 388 MSAs. That is 0.112% of the entire population and less than half of the total number of MSAs in the country. So this means that about only 0.151% of about 233,165,185 (this is the total number of people in the 163 MSAs surveyed) people were survey. That speaks for itself as a terrible representation.
Gallup also said that they surveyed a minimum of 300 people per MSA. With 0.151% of the population being the mean survey size, it must be assumed that they surveyed between 300-554 people in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA (0.082-0.151% of the MSA) and 300-364 people in the Charleston MSA (0.125-0.151% of the MSA.) Those numbers would be a bad representation of a place even the size of Parkersburg or Wheeling, let alone their complete respective MSAs.
To put this into perspective, there are about 120 cities, towns, villages, townships, census-designated place, and/or communities in general in the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA. That can be interpreted that they surveyed anywhere between 2-5 people per community. Now I am sure that Gallup surveyed more than 5 people in Huntington alone, so that means that some communities outside of Huntington were probably not sampled at all and thus unrepresented. Some of those small communities that managed to be sampled may have only had 1-2 people surveyed and Huntington could have only had 20-50 people surveyed. Aside from neither of those being a good sample size for a representation of their respective areas, they can be easily skewed. If 50 people from Huntington are surveyed and found to be 80% happy and healthy (40 people), then even 100 unhappy people from Lawrence, Boyd, Greenup, Wayne, Putnam, or Lincoln counties could seriously skew the results (Note: I am not saying these areas are unhappy or unhealthy, but simply giving a hypothetical example.)
Gallup says that for their smallest MSAs (which Huntington-Ashland-Ironton and Charleston are grouped in), the standard deviation can be as much as +/-6.5 percentage points. This alone throws off the entire poll considering that the difference between the first and last ranked MSAs are only 12 percentage points apart. The Huntington-Ashland-Ironton MSA and the Charleston MSA could very well be right in the middle and have an average well-being rating.
Finally, this Gallup poll also states that, "In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."
Nice try but that is called sampling. You cant sample every person. You are on the right track though. You need to find out how many people Gallup sampled. You can actually contact them and they will give you the information. This is what these organizations do. If you are going to try and argue this then you are arguing against polling in ALL cases because this is how it does. That is a much harder task than just disproving this one poll. In the end your argument is still It could be wrong but that works against you equally as much as it helps your case because depression and misery could be even worse in Huntington and Charleston. Perhaps with that sample they called the happier people.
Last edited by cry_havoc; 06-29-2013 at 10:53 AM..
You're wasting your finger joints typing all this - I pointed most of this out to no avail earlier in this thread.
It doesnt refute the poll. It justs shows that it could be different.It could be even more depressed. You need to show how samples they took in Huntington compared to other places, actual numbers and not assumptions, and then you could show a flaw if there is one. Saying there is standard deviation doesnt refute a poll, there is ALWAYS standard deviation. You probably dont understand any of this anyway.
Last edited by cry_havoc; 06-29-2013 at 10:51 AM..
Nice try but that is called sampling. You cant sample every person. You are on the right track though. You need to find out how many people Gallup sampled. You can actually contact them and they will give you the information.
It says how many people who surveyed in total: 353,363; and how many MSAs were used: 163. That means that the MAXIMUM possible for the smaller MSAs (i.e. Huntington and Charleston) must about 2,168 people per MSA. This still only comes out to about about 0.53% and 0.90% of The Huntington and Charleston MSAs respectively. It's a terrible sample of the population. It doesn't even break the 1% mark.
Note that they would most likely NOT sample 2,168 people in these smaller metros because that would mean that larger metro areas would not have 2,168 samples and thus be LESS represented than the smaller metros.
And again, the Gallup itself says that the standard deviation is +/-6.5 percentage points. This is an indication that the sample size is WAY TOO LOW because it can moves means significantly up and down in rank.
The sample size is too small to make any real conclusions.
It doesnt refute the poll. It justs shows that it could be different.It could be even more depressed. You need to show how samples they took in Huntington compared to other places, actual numbers and not assumptions, and then you could show a flaw if there is one. Saying there is standard deviation doesnt refute a poll, there is ALWAYS standard deviation. You probably dont understand any of this anyway.
No no no. No one said that standard deviation in itself refutes a poll but this particular standard deviation refutes this specific poll. Standard deviation by its very nature reflects the sample size. If the sample size is large enough then the standard deviation will be smaller. The larger MSAs have, as stated by Gallup, a standard deviation of +/-1.0 which means that they had enough samples that they could throw out any outliers. The smaller MSAs could NOT do that and those data throw off the means and thus the reported values.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
