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John,
One thing that Danny's questionaire didn't address was "How many additional folks might consider putting their names in the hat if they knew the candidates. In past years, when I have gotten a request from NOMCOM to review the padded list, I've thought to myself 'If I knew only these folks were running, I would have considered ...' I wonder if other people have thought the same.
John L.
_____ Original message _____
Subject: Re: Complaining about ADs to Nomcom (Re: Voting (again))
Author: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>
Date: 16th May 2005 9:58:21 PM
In the light of this and Dave's comments, and since I used to
teach people how to design survey questions so that the questions were as non-reactive as possible and the answers could be interpreted. There is nothing inherently wrong with a self-report question. We ask them all the time and normally expect truthful answers. The tricky part is understanding which questions people may not want to answer truthfully, the reasons why, and, if the person who is reluctant to answer provides _some_ answer, how either that or a pattern of non-response is likely to bias the results. For example, if one asks a large sample of 10-year-olds how old they are, the answers will, predictably, be mostly truthful: there are few incentives to lie and mistakes will tend to be nearly randomly distributed (slightly fatter tail to the "younger" side because of forgetting birthdays). If one asks the same question of 60 year olds, the answer pattern would probably be different, and it is important, if one is trying to interpret validity, to understand those differences and their likely impact, rather than assuming either that all population groups are the same or that all self-report answers are invalid.
Coming back to the question at hand, if the nomcom asks people whether they would have accepted nominations if their names would become public, why would someone lie? And, if they did, then which way would the report be biased. I would think that people who are inclined to give incorrect answers would be more inclined to answer "no problem" given the community's biases about openness and unwillingness to admit that they require secrecy. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but, if I'm not, the results Danny reported would, if anything, underestimate the
number of people who would not be willing to be considered if their names were public. We now return you to the regularly-scheduled religious arguments on the subject. john --On Monday, May 16, 2005 10:52 +0200 Brian E Carpenter
<brc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > You've seen Danny's message with the results of asking the > question in a straightforward way - 20% of IESG nominees > say they would not have volunteered. Unlike Dave, I am > willing to believe them. > > fwiw I responded "Yes" to Danny's question, but not > without careful thought and some hesitation. >
> Brian > > Dave Crocker wrote: >>> Seems fairly easy to judge the validity of that argument to >>> me. ASk the nomcom to ask volunteers whether they would >>> have volunteered if their name was gonig to be made public. >>> Collect statistics. >> >> >>
>> Sam, >> >> Sorry, no. >> >> As I posted earlier, that sort of methodology relies on what >> survey researchers call "self-report". >> >> It is very good for assessing attitudes and very bad for >> assessing actual behavior. >>
>> For example, what you are likely to get are responses that >> indicate whether the people would like to have nominations >> be public. >> >> It does not guarantee -- and well might not even correlate >> with -- whether they really would run or not run, depending >> on the public-ness of the nomination. >> >> It is one thing to ask simple questions about simple issues. >> As soon as we get into something more "political" the
>> psychodynamics get messy. >> >> >> d/ >> --- >> Dave Crocker >> Brandenburg InternetWorking >> +1.408.246.8253 >> dcrocker a t ... >> WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ietf mailing list >> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf >> > >
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