Iraqi's want US to stay awhile

[kandrathe]

Normally I already take surveys with a keg of salt (you can get every result you want with the right methods), but with Gallups surveys all being extremly more positive to the government than that of other survey conductors the keg gets quite big.

Hmmm. Ok, so you think Gallup crafts their polls to skew them toward the positive? Or, is it that most of the other polls are skewed toward the negative? You are right that one should not just trust a poll at face value. One should know enough about statistics to review the sampling method, sample size, the questions asked, and the possible answers to see if the poll is biased. The simple fact is that well designed and accurately conducted polls actually do work as a method for predicting human attitudes and behavior.

The Gallup mission is to be non-partisan and non-biased -- there is a tremendous amount of peer review in their process and they make a point to not cater to any special interest. I guess of any research, I would feel better about an organization such as this one, rather than the XYZ partisan think tank, or one particular social scientists research results.

Then you get to the analysis, as we saw in the Washington Times article, how you choose to reveal the numbers can have a big impact on the tone of the message. And, then the #1 rule I remember from statistics -- Correlation does not indicate causality.