Speaker by Various Artists

On a survey methodological level, it just looks worse the more I find out. Nerd rage to follow, but briefly up front: Increasingly, I think my original disagreement with the Human Rights Commission is more semantic than substantive.

I still believe it’s very important to test responses to that specific bellwether statement about Maori receiving so-called ‘special treatment’ in surveys, even if the ‘agree/disagree’ answer options don’t work properly in this one. (I’ve noted elsewhere that a better scale would be ‘how acceptable or unacceptable do you find this statement?’)

But because the overall effect of ‘Kiwimeter’ is one of causing emotional distress and feelings of marginalisation for Maori, even if due to incompetence, then it’s ultimately a racist effect. And as we know from our Human Rights Act harassment definitions, intent doesn’t matter; effect does. I’d like to thank folks on Twitter for sharing their experiences with me on this. 

Marama Fox is also right: in terms of research ethics, there was an ethical requirement to assess whether the survey would do ‘harm’ to respondents. I think there is good evidence that it has caused emotional distress and harm (one Twitter commenter described seeing that question as a “punch to the puku”). Those responsible seemingly did NOT due their due diligence to assess whether there was a risk of this. The academics who were involved need have a close look at the part they played.

How do you assess that risk? You test the survey. Did they do this?  Not properly.  This is what I have figured out so far:

Some people have reported taking part in the original survey that developed the archetypes, and we now know it was not a representative random population sample survey. It was a weighted selection of the self-selective group of people who had previously filled out ‘Vote Compass’.  From appearances, Vox Labs seems sort of confident that their approach to non-random selection is basically awesome, as if it’s as good as a YouGov panel, and that upweighting or downweighting certain demographics to match their population proportions is, indeed, magic.

[SPOILER: WEIGHTING IS NOT MAGIC AND VOX LABS IS NOT YOUGOV].

So yes, absolutely no part of this survey even originated as a representative ‘probability sample’ survey. For the moment, let’s leave behind speculation about whether Vox Labs is as good at constructing a representative-ish online panel as YouGov, as we have nothing to go on other than my own mean instincts.

Instead, let’s look at the failure of the survey testing stage and questionnaire development.  These are very big nerd-problems.

Essentially, the original more carefully-but-not-randomly selected survey was the pilot for Kiwimeter. From folks like Stephen Judd and Stephanie Rogers who remember taking part in that pilot, the questions in the original survey weren’t substantially different from the current survey and the one that has attracted all the controversy was exactly the same.  So if they got negative feedback at that stage, they didn’t care enough to change it.

The Founder/Director of Vox Labs, Cliff Van Der Linden, has been tweeting somewhat piteously from Canada in defense of the methodology, including a couple of tweets to me so far. I asked him whether there had been cognitive testing carried out on the survey, as this would have prevented the main problems I wrote about earlier.

As you can see from the screen grab, his completely off-topic response about factor analysis (a data crunching method to be applied to results) seemed to indicate that he did not understand my question, possibly because he did not know what cognitive testing was.

NEEERRRRRDRRAAAAAAAGE

I thought I was pretty restrained though, right?

What is cognitive testing? It’s a kind of interviewing technique where people talk about what is going through their minds as they fill out a survey – it would have picked up the ‘this seems racist’ problem immediately.  It’s a standard step that credible survey research organisations build into the development phase. And it is not complicated or expensive shit to do.

Most data nerds, programmers and political scientists don’t need to know what cognitive testing is, and this seems to be Van Der Linden’s background. But any nerd who works in survey research damn well better. I look at the culture of an online ‘engagement’ outfit like Vox Labs, and I don’t see a depth of knowledge about traditional survey research and its implementation, which is a problem for credibility on a project whose credibility is already compromised because it’s being carried out by, well, TVNZ.

Also on his Twitter stream, Van Der Linden however pleads that Vox was not responsible for questionnaire development, only technical delivery and analysis. I have some sympathy.  He states that the questionnaire was developed by a panel of New Zealanders that included academics and Maori - why would Vox have doubted their expertise?  Fair enough! What happened here?  I have no freakin’ idea.

But not all academics are necessarily going to have a professional survey research background in the nuts and bolts of delivering a questionnaire that works, even if they are great at analysing psychological constructs from data.

If the New Zealand panel did any cognitive piloting, they obviously didn’t sample widely enough. It’s possible that they viewed ‘piloting’ as Vox’s area. But Vox was in Canada: How could it carry out decent qualitative research with New Zealanders?  The blame does not lie with the Canadians.  This is a very disappointing day for New Zealand academia. The comments so far from those involved have not been illuminating.

When the jobs have been portioned out like this - questions here, implementation there - a meaningful on-the-ground pilot to test whether the questions actually worked was lost. This whole project seems like a classic case of a failure of research expertise and oversight of the whole enterprise, from development to delivery, start to finish.  Instead of nose to tail dining, we’ve got something half-assed. 

I hope at least it was as cheap as it looks.

Tze Ming Mok apologises for an entire blog about survey methodology 

The Human Rights Commission is wrong. It’s not racist for a survey to put up a statement that captures everything liberals and radicals hate about latent anti-Maori attitudes, and ask whether you agree or disagree with it.

It’s a perfectly reasonable way to measure how anti-Maori people are. I don’t know what the HRC expects here: for attitudinal survey questions to be so PC that they either allow people to hide how bigoted they are, or just not gather any information about people’s attitudes at all? I expect that they don’t expect anything in particular, as it’s not their job to conduct social research on people’s attitudes. But it would help if they understood what it is for.

People want research that can help society. But we can’t help society if we don’t know where the problems are. And we can’t see where the problems are unless we ask the hard questions about people’s sometimes shitty attitudes.

At the same time, the negative reactions I’ve seen to this survey within my own liberal bubble do highlight some real problems with how the ‘Kiwimeter’ has been executed by TVNZ. Essentially, it’s been carried out in a way that makes people suspect its motives, that makes people uncomfortable, and makes people think that there is a hidden agenda.

Surveyfail 1: The Kiwi-measuring contest

As I said, asking respondents whether or not they agree with offensive statements, is not inherently racist. It’s essentially asking people whether they have shitty, bigoted views, which is something really important to find out. The fact that the survey is called a ‘Kiwimeter’ though? Hmm, maybe a bit racist. Personally, I’m not comfortable with it, because the overwhelming suggestion is that it’s going to tell you how much of a ‘Kiwi’ you are, with the possibility that you will fail the Kiwi-ness test, and that you identify with the term ‘Kiwi’ anyway.

I’m not the only one that has been turned off by this; others have decided not to fill it out on these grounds. The name of the survey operates on an assumption that all New Zealanders have an uncomplicated response to this term as a national identity; which seems kind of an oversight for a survey about national identity. The people filling it are already more likely to be those who have opted in to a certain kind of national identity, so that undermines the whole enterprise… and sets the scene for all that follows.

Surveyfail 2: ‘What is this shit?’

From comments I’ve seen, people seemed very confused about what the survey was, and I have not fared much better myself.  A lot of people didn’t realise that there had been a large, scientific and more detailed survey conducted into social attitudes, that had generated the six ‘Kiwi archetypes’ to start with. The accompanying text intended to explain the online survey was brief, ambiguous and misleading.

You could not understand anything about the status of the data (am I the Kiwimeter survey? Is the other survey the Kiwimeter survey?) that you were about to deliver into TVNZ’s hot little hands, even if you read the FAQs and methodology section, which only nerds like me do. For people clicking through quickly, it seemed like their Buzzfeed-like answers themselves were forming the basis of something with about as much validity as a Herald online poll.

Surveyfail 3: ‘Oh, I see where this is going…’

Compounding all of this, was the lack of any warning or explainer about how to view or react to the questions. People saw statements that seemed personally offensive, leading and inflammatory - statements for many, cut to the very core of racial enmity and oppression in this country - and instead of thinking: “Aha, this is an attitude survey, I will click ‘strongly disagree’ and have a glass of water” they simply got really uncomfortable. One senior academic I know who specialises in national attitudes and identity research did not complete the survey for this reason. Guys, this is a baaaaad sign.

These three fails combined make it fully understandable why a lot of people might have thought this was some kind of racist survey.  And the way that the execution was fumbled like this makes me think that they almost deserve for people to think it’s a racist survey.

The thing is, I’m pretty sure it’s not a racist survey.

But I have questions.

The original large-scale survey of 10,000 people drawn from a properly representative sample (I still can’t tell whether this is also being referred to as the Kiwimeter) itself seems like it could be an invaluable research resource for academics and policymakers for years to come, since they keep touting it as the ‘largest ever’ (ah, but if you’re doing to get into dick-measuring, you’re going to have to go longitudinal, amirite NZAVS?). 

What are they doing with the microdata?  Is it going to be open access? What are TVNZ’s public responsibilities in the use, distribution and control of this information?  None, because it’s a commercial operation; or lots, because they are a state body? In which case, can I have it please?

As for the ‘Kiwimeter’ online data, which is forming the basis of a bunch of stories being pumped out now by TVNZ, the methodology section only describes how they carried out the first proper survey that generated the archetypes; it does not say whether they are doing any post-survey weighting with the online results in order to try to make it better than a Herald online poll.

I’m only assuming this is being done, otherwise, kill me now because otherwise the #nerdrage will destroy all before it. But even assuming this, there is a big big problem with the fact that the choice to select into and complete the online survey is not independent from attitudes about national identity. Because, as discussed above it’s called a fucking ‘Kiwimeter’.  So I don’t know why they don’t just publish the findings of the 10,000-strong scientific survey instead as it will be much more credible. 

My biggest worry though, is what TVNZ’s motives are in carrying out this kind of attitudinal research on national identity, and how responsible they are going to be with the findings. Are the academics doing the analysis worried about losing control of the results amid a ratings-driven frenzy?  Will the use of the findings and the data by TVNZ be driven by a need for enlightenment, or a need for controversy and profit? 

Can I tick all of the above?

Full disclosure: Tze Ming previously worked at the Human Rights Commission, and as a researcher at NatCen Social Research which conducts the British Social Attitudes Survey. Oh yeah, and blogged on Public Address.

The latest Coen Brothers offering, Hail Caesar!, is a screwball homage to fifties cinema, a careering narrative where in the end almost nothing has changed significantly. Integral to the story are a group of communist screenwriters who first befuddle and then convert George Clooney’s wonderfully gormless matinee star, Baird Whitlock.

To anyone who has attended a left study group or party meeting, it would have all seemed hilarious and yet utterly haunting. The faith in the all powerful dialectic, the academic sterility of the arguments and the unshakeable belief in the theories which explain the past, the present and also predict the future.

The sheer inscrutability of it all to someone not fully immersed and saturated, leaves newcomers with two choices; either fully commit or get the hell out. It’s a gorgeous microcosm of politics as a whole in fact, or at least it seems that way sometimes. Politics is a hierarchy of the serious where your position within the hierarchy is often determined by how seriously other people in politics take what you say.

Politics is attritional. The vast majority of the public seldom care about the daily grind, the seemingly never-ending warfare of examining every interview, commenting on every issue and become increasingly angry, frustrated and isolated when nobody listens to you. This oft-mentioned beltway, or bubble, extends far beyond the Beehive and encompasses the whole grinding industry of political commentary. And most people, most people, don’t have the time to commit.

But we’re all committed, in a helpless fashion, to the future. The future provides us with the particular pleasure of prediction, the chance to exercise the art of telling a story that hasn’t happened and may never. Possibility lies in the future, hope too. And dread, mind you.

Prediction is a game we can all play, it’s a game we all play. There are no losers, unless you consider guessing wrong a dreadful affront to your intellect. So here’s some questions about the future to consider, I’d be fascinated to have your opinion on them;

Government

National

What does a post-Key National look like and who is in charge?

United Future

Will Peter Dunne become the Hone Harawira of the 2017 election? What does that mean for coalition maths.

Maori

Will the Maori Party be able to continue its role as everyone’s coalition partner if they lose any more seats?

ACT

Can David Seymour revive the party in an electoral sense, and is he relying on peeling off soft National voters to do so?

Opposition

Labour

Are they ready to win yet, or, can they establish the look of a Government in waiting by 2017? If not, is it Jacinda time?

Greens

With Green issues increasingly going mainstream, how can that be translated into electoral success? If it can, where do those votes come from?

New Zealand First

Can NZF continue to punch above its weight without the redoubtable Mr Peters in charge?

Mana

Can they come back? 

Before I get a flurry of hate mail, let me start off with a disclaimer. I’m well to the left of pretty much everyone running for President in the US right now.  And frankly, so are you if you live in New Zealand. Hillary pre-2015 was well to the right of the National Party, and even Bernie is well to right of us on things like gun ownership. 

I also think Donald Trump is a fascist who is a serious threat to not just democracy in the USA but to everyone on the planet.  And I also think that Hillary Clinton can’t really be trusted and will say whatever she thinks people want to hear.

Yet I still quite strongly believe that the best thing for progressives is to have a Clinton vs. Trump showdown in November.  And here’s the kicker: even though I love what Sanders stands for, I still believe Clinton will be better for the progressive movement.

Now, unless you spend many hours of your week checking out fivethirtyeight.com and politico.com you’re probably panicking a bit about the prospect of Trump becoming President. Don’t be. It is within literally everyone’s interest to play up his chances even though mathematically he has near none.

For the media, it’s simple: they need the clicks and Trump is walking, talking clickbait.  Everything written about him gets views, which is why you’re reading this, and why I used his name in the title.

For the Democrats it’s turnout.  Voters don’t turn out if they are a bit ‘meh’ about their candidate or if they feel the election doesn’t really matter.  Talking up the threat of Trump is absolutely perfect for boosting voter turnout (and donations). 

He’s the perfect opponent for Democrats because he actually increases their chances of winning every time he opens his mouth!  Let’s look at the math:  Trump would have to win about 70% of white males to win a general election, and no Republican has come close in US history.  Worse still for them, the share of African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities has been increasing year on year, making it near impossible for any Republican to win, let alone one that goes about alienating each of those groups.

Reagan and Bush Snr. both won their elections comfortably with about 63% of the white male vote. Fast-forward to 2012, Romney still managed to get 62% of white males votes but lost to Obama by 3.5 million votes.

It was no accident that the GOP establishment were backing the likes of Bush (who has a Hispanic wife and is fluent in Spanish) as well as Rubio and Cruz.  They need the Latino vote or they’re never going to ever take back the White House.  In the years between Reagan and Romney, the total share of Latino voters has increased from 3% to 10%.

Further, the election of Barack Obama has evaporated their chances of getting the Black vote for at least a generation.  And they also don’t seem to be that keen to treat gay people like human beings which tends to hurt them with young people.  As for women voters, they’ve generally supported Democrats by slightly higher margins, but party affiliation always takes precedence over gender. 

Frankly, pretty much any Democrat (even Frank Underwood) would crush Trump purely on the mathematics of demographics.  Of course, elections are not that simple – you still need to turn out your voters.  And the biggest risk is that Democratic voters stay at home on election day (Yes, people are the worst!).  There is some cause for worrying about this, but if Trump were the candidate it would definitely solve the enthusiasm gap.  Fear and hate would be a driving force on the left for a change.  (Guys, it’s okay to hate fascists!)

Speaking of Obama, we’ve yet to see him stump for the Democratic candidate.  He’s already wiped the floor with Trump once before. And chances are with nothing left to lose, he’s going to simply humiliate him in the most public way possible and do it with style and class.  Beating Trump is not about making a rational argument, it’s about taking a bully down a notch and making him seem small.  And between Obama, the Clintons, and the creative power of Hollywood, I’m pretty confident they can hit him right where it hurts.

Given a Democratic President in almost every scenario, I’m of the controversial belief that Hillary back in the West Wing would be better for the progressive movement than Sanders.  To understand why, you have to understand how the US political system works.

Don’t worry, I’m not going into the deep, confusing detail.  Just remember this: The President has much less power to pass a new law in the US than our own PM does here in New Zealand.  They have the Senate and the House of Representatives (Congress) through which most policy has to go through to become Law (don’t worry about the Supreme Court for now).  Elections for those positions happen at very odd intervals. that I’m not going to go into detail except for the fact that a whole heap of them are up for re-election this year.

So naturally, come November, the ballot will include all positions from President to your local school board.  People generally vote ‘Down Ballot’ as in they vote for a single party from the highest office to the lowest.  In 2012, 94% of House districts voted for the same party in the House as well as the Presidency.  And similarly, the correlation between voters for Senate seats and the Presidency was 0.781 (zero indicates no relationship, while one would indicate a perfect, exact relationship between two variables).

Whoever wins the Presidency would bring in a lot of people from their party into office on their coattails.  Trump would actually be disastrous for the Republican Party, which is why they’re so freaked out right now (read full article here). I love watching him wreck the party from the inside as they stand by helpless. 

Democrats (and all progressives) have this obsession with the Presidency and seem to ignore immense power all the other branches of government have in influencing actual outcomes.  Liberals really need to get over their ‘great white/brown saviour complex’ and learn to play the long game.

If Sanders makes it into the White House, he will have almost no chance of implementing any of the “radical” policies he ran on, thanks to a hostile Congress and Senate.  This would lead to the predictable disillusionment of the Democratic base, and the eventual rout at the midterm elections when once again a whole heap of Senate and House seats are up for re-election.  We saw this in 2010, where the Democrats squandered their majorities and let the Republicans take back control of government, effectively blocking Obama’s progressive agenda.  Knowing how complacent left wing voters and activists are, this is quite likely to happen again.

However, if Hillary wins, the enthusiasm gap would actually be a good thing.  Leaders of progressive movements like #BlackLivesMatter, Occupy, and the climate movement would be able to keep their supporters outraged and agitated, and be able to channel that energy far more easily into pressuring Clinton both directly and by running against moderate Democrats in the House, Senate, and Governorships. 

The energy that’s behind Sanders right now needs to be channelled into more regional and local battles.  The White House on its own can be a bit of red herring.  Not only do all the bat-shit insane Republicans need to be removed from office, so do all the so called “moderate” Democrats.  Clinton is a political pragmatist who has already shown how far she can be moved by an organised progressive movement.

I don’t trust her one bit, but that really shouldn’t be a factor anyway.  That’s just being lazy.  Politicians get elected to represent the whole country not just you and your liberal mates. They will listen to the loudest voices of the moment.  If that’s not liberals, who can’t seem to bother turning up to vote half the time, then we only really have ourselves to blame.  Choosing Clinton over Sanders would give progressive leaders a much stronger position to maintain the outrage and grow their movements.  That’s how you win the long game.

Ultimately, I’m not actually that worried about the events in the USA as they stand.  It’s a country that’s growing less white, and more liberal by the day.  And the Republicans are caught in a strategic death spiral.  Their base of white males is slowly losing its position of power in society.  They can feel it happening right across the board and they’re scared.  Trump being a brilliant salesman has tapped into that fear and stoking it into anger. But it’s already too late.  With every inflammatory statement, they might shore up the votes of a few more white males but they lose even more women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and young people.  It’s an easy strategy for winning the nomination but not the White House. 

The age of political and cultural power of the white male is near its end in the United States of America and Donald Trump is their last King.  His defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton would be great to watch, but I don’t think it will happen.  It looks like the Republican establishment is going to force a brokered convention and use this to give the nomination to someone else.  Which would also implode the party by pissing off Trump supporters.  They’re damned either way – so sit back and enjoy the show. 

Children are empathic sponges.  The environment they find themselves in, soaking up and feeling what those around them feel, unavoidably affects them.  This is no truer than with anxiety, and now five years on from the beginning of the earthquakes in Canterbury, those who have known no other reality than post-earthquake Christchurch are starting school.

At the time of the initial quakes the National government made much of the ongoing support that the people of Canterbury would need and the government's commitment to fund this, in part via specific funding for ongoing counselling for those experiencing psychological distress as a result of the earthquakes.

Now, nearly five years on, this funding is being slashed, and in addition the Canterbury District Health Board is being forced to cut Mental Health service provision as a result of unavoidable funding shortfalls, a direct consequence of increases in demand.

In both cases the Ministry of Health’s position has been “there is no problem, and funding is adequate.”  Of course, the Minister of Health remains silent on this matter: it has quite clearly been his strategy to make no comment on mental health funding while he holds the portfolio, except of course to express concerns about the “financial performance” of the various regions' services.

But despite the blanket denials being issued by the Ministry of Health officials, the reality is quite different.  Anecdotally, there are multiple reports of children arriving at school developmentally delayed, struggling socially and with high levels of anxiety: all at rates way beyond “normal”. 

And the evidence is not just anecdotal.  Canterbury District Health Board has seen an increase in demand of 67% for child and adolescent mental health services, with verified reports of waitlists of many months for an initial psychiatrists assessment.

Let’s be clear: the struggles that are now well-documented are not due to abuse, or bad parenting.  It’s due to the chronic effects of living under the ongoing fear of further quakes, the stress of dealing with insurance companies and the chronic background noise of devastation and challenge that the earthquakes has caused for families and parents.

For adults the news is no better:

Funding information for the Canterbury District Health Board's (CDHB) upcoming financial year, obtained by Stuff, shows the discrepancy between the region's mental health funding and the national average growing larger.

This is alongside a 55% increase in suicide related calls to the Canterbury police, in the last year, as compared to per-earthquake levels in 2011.

All of this makes the ministry's claim that there is no evidence of an increase in demand frankly absurd.  What’s also deeply frustrating to those who work in this field is that we knew how this was going to play out in 2011. 

International experience in natural disaster trauma predicts that we should expect that the initial community support and coming together is protective, and that anxiety, depression, substance abuse and PTSD impacts tend to be delayed, in many cases for years afterwards.

Of course, research aside, the situation is abundantly clear to the people of Canterbury who continue to be deeply affected by the events of the last five years, as are the children growing up under the effects of chronic stress and uncertainty, with exhausted parents and communities.

I’ve come to believe, somewhat cynically, that you can divide the world into those who understand and are compassionate towards the effects of trauma, and those who don’t. 

It would be nice to think that the Ministry of Health and Jonathan Coleman might get it.  Unfortunately we have a Health Minister than is more interested in financial performance than people’s wellbeing and a government that has a track record of slashing counselling services and underspending on public mental health services.

And of course last weekend's quake just underlines that for those in Canterbury, the after-effects go on and on.  However the message from this Government is now very clear:  Canterbury, just get over it.

Kyle MacDonald is a psychotherapist, blogger, and regular co-host on the long running mental health radio show “The Nutters Club.”  He is also the Chair of Public Issues for the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists. 

For more see: www.psychotherapy.org.nz